to what the busy world has been about, while we
have been watching fields of floating ice, and battling it with the
elements through an entire season. A letter from E.A. Brush, Esq.,
Washington, March 13th, says: "Nothing is talked about here, as I may
well presume you know from the papers, but the deposits and their
removal, and their restoration; and that frightful mother of all
mischief, the money maker (U.S. Bank). Every morning (the morning begins
here at twelve, meridian) the Senate chamber is thronged with ladies and
feathers, and their obsequious satellites, to hear the sparring. Every
morning a speech is made upon presentation of some petition representing
that the country is overwhelmed with ruin and disasters, and that the
fact is notorious and palpable; or, that the country is highly
prosperous and flourishing, and that everybody knows it. One, that its
only safety lies in the continuance of the Bank; and the other, that our
liberties will be prostrated if it is re-chartered. Of course, the well
in which poor truth has taken refuge, in this exigency, is very deep.

"But the Senate is, at this moment, an extraordinary constellation of
talent. There is Mr. Webster, and Mr. Clay, and Mr. Calhoun, and a
no-way inferior, Mr. Preston, the famous debater in the South Carolina
troubles, and Mr. Benj. Watkins Leigh, the equally celebrated ambassador
near the government of South Carolina. All are ranged on one side, and
it is a phalanx as formidable, in point of moral force, as the
twenty-four can produce. Mr. Forsyth is the atlas upon whose shoulders
are made to rest all the sins of the administration. Every shaft flies
at him, or rather is intended for others through him; and his Ajax
shield of seven bull hides is more than once pierced, in the course of
the frequent encounters to which he is invited, and from which they will
not permit him to secede. But it is all talk. They will do nothing. A
constitutional majority in the Senate (two-thirds) is very doubtful, and
a bare one in the House, still more problematical. Of course, you are
aware that the executive has expressed its unyielding determination not
to sign a bill for the re-charter, or to permit a restoration of
the deposits.

"Houses are cracking in the cities, as if in the midst of an earthquake,
and there is hardly a man engaged in mercantile operations (I might say
not one) who will not feel the 'pressure.'"

Major W. Whiting writes from Detroit, March