To the needless distresses brought on the country during the last session of Congress has since been added the open seizure of the dividends on the public stock to the amount of $170,041, under pretense of paying damages, cost, and interest upon the protested French bill.  This sum constituted a portion of the estimated revenues for the year 1834, upon which the appropriations made by Congress were based.  It would as soon have been expected that our collectors would seize on the customs or the receivers of our land offices on the moneys arising from the sale of public lands under pretenses of claims against the United States as that the bank would have retained the dividends.  Indeed, if the principle be established that anyone who chooses to set up a claim against the United States may without authority of law seize on the public property or money wherever he can find it to pay such claim, there will remain no assurance that our revenue will reach the Treasury or that it will be applied after the appropriation to the purposes designated in the law.  The paymasters of our Army and the pursers of our Navy may under like pretenses apply to their own use moneys appropriated to set in motion the public force, and in time of war leave the country without defense.  This measure resorted to by the bank is disorganizing and revolutionary, and if generally resorted to by private citizens in like cases would fill the land with anarchy and violence.

It is a constitutional provision “that no money shall be drawn from the Treasury but in consequence of appropriations made by law.”  The palpable object of this provision is to prevent the expenditure of the public money for any purpose whatsoever which shall not have been first approved by the representatives of the people and the States in Congress assembled.  It vests the power of declaring for what purposes the public money shall be expended in the legislative department of the Government, to the exclusion of the executive and judicial, and it is not within the constitutional authority of either of those departments to pay it away without law or to sanction its payment.  According to this plain constitutional provision, the claim of the bank can never be paid without an appropriation by act of Congress.  But the bank has never asked for an appropriation.  It attempts to defeat the provision of the Constitution and obtain payment without an act of Congress.  Instead of awaiting an appropriation passed by both Houses and approved by the President, it makes an appropriation for itself and invites an appeal to the judiciary to sanction it.  That the money had not technically been paid into the Treasury does not affect the principle intended to be established by the Constitution.  The Executive and the judiciary have as little right to appropriate and expend the public money without authority of law before it is placed to the credit of the Treasury as to take it from the Treasury.  In the annual report of the Secretary of the Treasury, and in his correspondence with the president of the bank, and the opinions of the Attorney-General accompanying it, you will find a further examination of the claims of the bank and the course it has pursued.