going on; and all this for political effect, and to be followed up by the electioneering fabrication that it is the effect of the veto message. Yes! the veto message and President, are to be held up as the cause of these curtailments, which have been going on for half a year past!

right to constitute trustees to wind up its affairs. The Congress acted upon the suggestion by refusing the time; the bank acted upon the suggestion by appointing trustees; the debtors hushed their cries, and the public never heard of the subject afterwards. The pretext of an un"Connected with the creation of this new renewed charter is not necessary to stimulate debt, was the establishment of several new the bank to the pressure of Western debtors. branches, and the promise of many more. In- Look at Cincinnati! what but a determination stead of remaining stationary, and awaiting the to make its power felt and feared occasioned the action of Congress, the bank showed itself de- pressure at that place? And will that dispositermined to spread and extend its business, not tion ever be wanting to such an institution as only in debts, but in new branches. Nashville, that of the Bank of the United States? Natchez, St. Louis, were favored with branches "The senator from Kentucky has changed his at the eleventh hour. New-York had the same opinion about the constitutionality of the bank; favor done her; and, at one of these (the branch but has he changed it about the legality of the at Utica), the Senate could judge of the neces- trust? If he has not, he must surrender his sity to the federal government which occasioned alarms for the ruin of the West; if he has, the it to be established, and which necessity, in the law itself is unchanged. The bank may act opinion of the Supreme Court, is sufficient to under it; and if she does not, it is because she overturn the laws and constitution of a State: will not; and because she chooses to punish the the Senate could judge of this necessity, from West for refusing to support her candidate for the fact that twenty-five dollars is rather a large the presidency. What then becomes of all this deposit to the credit of the United States Trea- cry about ruined fortunes, fallen prices, and the surer, and that, at the last returns, the federal. loss of growing crops? All imagination or cruel deposit was precisely two dollars and fifty cents! tyranny! The bank debt of the West is thirty This extension of branches and increase of debt, millions. She has six years to pay it in; and, at the approaching termination of the charter, at all events, he that cannot pay in six years, was evidence of the determination of the bank can hardly do it at all. Ten millions are in bills to be rechartered at all hazards. It was done of exchange; and, if they are real bills, they will to create an interest to carry her through, in be payable at maturity, in ninety or one hundred spite of the will of the people. Numerous pro-and twenty days; if not real bills, but disguised mises for new branches, is another trick of the same kind. Thirty new branches are said to be in contemplation, and about three hundred villages have been induced each to believe that it- "But, the great point for the West to fix its self was the favored spot of location; but, always attention upon is the fact that, oncc in every ten upon the condition, well understood, that Jack-years, the capital of this debt is paid in annual son should not be re-elected, and that they should elect a representative to vote for the recharter.

"Mr. B., having shown when and why this Western debt was created, examined next into the alleged necessity for its prompt and rigorous collection, if the charter was not renewed; he denied the existence of any such necessity in point of law. He affirmed that the bank could take as much time as she pleased to collect her debts, and could be just as gentle with her debtors as she chose. All that she had to do was to convert a few of her directors into trustees, as the old Bank of the United States had done, the affairs of which were wound up so gently that the country did not know when it ended. Mr. B. appealed to what would be admitted to be bank authority on this point: it was the opinion of the senator from Kentucky (Mr. Clay), not in his speech against renewing the bank charter, in 1811, but in his report of that year against allowing it time affairs. The bank then asked me to wind up its up its affairs; a cry was raised that the country would be ruined, if time was not allowed; but the senator from Kentucky then answered that cry, by referring the bank to its common law

loans, drawing interest as a debt, and premium as a bill of exchange, they are usurious and void, and may be vacated in any upright court.

interest; and that, after paying the capital many times over in interest, the principal will have to be paid at last. The sooner, then, the capital is paid and interest stopped, the better for the country.

"Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had dilated largely upon the withdrawal of bank capital from the West. Mr. B. showed, from the bank documents, that they had sent but 938,000 dollars of capital there; that the operation was the other way, a ruinous drain of capital, and that in hard money, from the West. He went over the tables which showed the annual amount of these drains, and demonstrated its ruinous nature upon the South and West. He showed the tendency of all branch bank paper to flow to the Northeast, the necessity to redeem it annually with gold and silver, and bills of exchange, and the inevitable result, that the West would eventually be left without either hard money, or branch bank paper.

"Mr. Clay had attributed all the disasters of the late war, especially the surrender of Detroit, and the Bladensburg rout, to the want of this bank. Mr. B. asked if bank credits, or bank advances, could have inspired courage into the bosom of the unhappy old man who had been

the cause of the surrender of Detroit? or, could tened on their spoils. They were stripped of have made those fight who could not be inspired their specie to pamper the imperial bank. They by the view of their capitol, the presence of their fell victims to their patriotism, and to the estab President, and the near proximity of their fami- lishment of the United States bank; and it was lies and firesides? Andrew Jackson conquered unjust and unkind to reproach them with a fate at New Orleans, without money, without arms, which their patriotism, and the establishment without credit-aye, without a bank. He got of the federal bank brought upon them. even his flints from the pirates. He scouted the "Mr. Clay and Mr. Webster had rebuked the idea of brave men being produced by the bank. President for his allusion to the manner in which If it had existed, it would have been a burthen the bank charter had been pushed through Conupon the hands of the government. It was now, gress, pending an unfinished investigation, relucat this hour, a burthen upon the hands of the tantly conceded. Mr. B. demanded if that was government, and an obstacle to the payment of not true? He asked if it was not wrong to push the public debt. It had procured a payment of the charter through in that manner, and if the six millions of the public debt to be delayed, President had not done right to stop it, to balk from July to October, under the pretext that this hurried process, and to give the people time the merchants could not pay their bonds, when for consideration and enable them to act? He these bonds were now paid, and twelve millions of had only brought the subject to the notice of the dollars--twice the amount intended to have been Congress and the people, but had not recompaid-lies in the vaults of the bank to be used by mended immediate legislation, before the subject her in beating down the veto message, the author had been canvassed before the nation. It was a of the message, and all who share his opinions. gross perversion of his messages to quote them The bank was not only a burthen upon the in favor of immediate decision without previous hands of the government now, but had been a investigation. He was not evading the question. burthen upon it in three years after it started-The veto message proved that. He sought time when it would have stopped payment, as all America knows, in April 1819, had it not been for the use of eight millions of public deposits, and the seasonable arrival of wagons loaded with specie from Kentucky and Ohio.

for the people, not for himself, and in that he coincided with a sentiment lately expressed by the senator himself (from Kentucky) at Cincinnati; he was coinciding with the example of the British parliament, which had not yet decided the question of rechartering the Bank of England, and which had just raised an extraordinary committee of thirty-one members to examine the bank through all her departments; and, what was much more material, he had coincided with the spirit of our constitution, and the rights of the people, in preventing an expiring minority Congress from usurping the powers and rights of their successors. The President had not evaded the question. He had met it fully. He might have said nothing about it in his messages of 1829, '30, and '31. He might have remained silent, and had the support of both parties; but the safety and interest of the country required the people to be awakened to the consideration of the subject. He had waked them up; and now that they are awake, he has secured them time for consideration. Is this evasion?

"Mr. B. defended the old banks in Kentucky, Ohio, and Tennessee, from the aspersions which had been cast upon them. They had aided the government when the Northern bankers, who now scoff at them, refused to advance a dollar. They had advanced the money which enabled the warriors of the West to go forth to battle. They had crippled themselves to aid their government. After the war they resumed specie payments, which had been suspended with the consent of the legislatures, to enable them to extend all their means in aid of the national struggle. This resumption was made practicable by the Treasury deposit, in the State institutions. They were withdrawn to give capital to the branches of the great monopoly, when first extended to the West. These branches, then, produced again the draining of the local banks, which they had voluntarily suffered for the sake of "Messrs. C. and W. had attacked the Presigovernment during the war. They had sacri- dent for objecting to foreign stockholders in the ficed their interests and credit to sustain the Bank of the United States. Mr. B. maintained the credit of the national treasury—and the treasu- solidity of the objection, and exposed the futility ry surrendered them, as a sacrifice to the national of the argument urged by the duplicate senators. bank. They stopped payment under the pres- They had asked if foreigners did not hold stock sure and extortion of the new establishments, in road and canal companies? Mr. B. said, yes! introduced against the consent of the people and but these road and canal companies did not haplegislatures of the Western States. The paper pen to be the bankers of the United States! The of the Western banks depreciated-the stock of foreign stockholders in this bank were the bankthe States and of individual stockholders was ers of the United States. They held its moneys; sacrificed-the country was filled with a spu- they collected its revenues; they almost conrious currency, by the course of an institution trolled its finances; they were to give or withwhich, it was pretended, was established to pre- hold aid in war as well as peace, and, it might vent such a calamity The Bank of the United be, against their own government. Was the States was thus established on the ruins of the United States to depend upon foreigners in a banks, and foreigners and non-residents were fat-point so material to our existence ? The bank

|

In a

the private bankers may feel themselves bound
to hold, he could not believe they had any sat-
isfaction in remaining subject to a power which
might destroy them at any moment.'
fourth: 'No man in France was heard to com-
plain of the Bastile while it existed; yet when
it fell, it came down amidst the universal accla-
mations of the nation!'

was a national institution. Ought a national institution to be the private property of aliens? It was called the Bank of the United States, and ought it to be the bank of the nobility and gentry of Great Britain? The senator from Kentucky had once objected to foreign stockholders himself. He did this in his speech against the bank in 1811; and although he had revoked the constitutional doctrines of that speech, he [Mr. B.] never understood that he had revoked the sentiments then expressed of the danger of corruption in our councils and elections, if foreigners wielded the moneyed power of our country. He told us then that the power of the purse commanded that of the sword—and would he commit both to the hands of foreigners? All the lessons of history, said Mr. B., admonish us to keep clear of foreign influence. The most dangerous influence from foreignersis through money. The corruption of orators and statesmen, is the ready way to poison the councils, and to betray the interest of a country. Foreigners now own one fourth of this bank; they may own the whole of it! What a temptation to them to engage in our elections! By carrying a President, and a majority of Congress, to suit themselves, they not only become masters of the moneyed power, but also of the political power, of this republic. And can it be supposed that the British stockholders are indifferent to the issue of this election? that they, and their agents, can see with indifference, the re-election of a man who may disappoint their hopes of fortune, and whose achievement at New Orleans is a continued memento of the most signal defeat the arms of Eng-lent are millions of tongues, under its terrors, land ever sustained?

"The President, in his message, had characterized the exclusive privilege of the bank as 'a monopoly. To this Mr. Webster had taken exception, and ascended to the Greek root of the word to demonstrate its true signification, and the incorrectness of the President's application. Mr. B. defended the President's use of the term, and said that he would give authority too, but not Greek authority. He would ascend, not to the Greek root, but to the English test of the word, and show that a whig baronet had applied the term .to the Bank of England with still more offensive epithets than any the President had used. Mr. B. then read, and commented upon several passages of a speech of Sir William Pulteney, in the British House of Commons, against renewing the charter of the Bank of England, in which the term monopoly was repeatedly applied to that bank; and other terms to display its dangerous and odious charter. In one of the passages the whig baronet said: "The bank has been supported, and is still supported, by the fear and terror which, by the means of its monopoly, it has had the power to inspire.' In another, he said: 'I consider the power given by the monopoly to be of the nature of all other despotic power, which corrupts the despot as much as it corrupts the slave!' In a third passage he said: 'Whatever language

"Here, continued Mr. B., is authority, English authority, for calling the British bank in England a monopoly; and the British bank in America is copied from it. Sir Wm. Pulteney goes further than President Jackson. He says, that the Bank of England rules by fear and terror. He calls it a despot, and a corrupt despot. He speaks of the slaves corrupted by the bank; by whom he doubtless means the nominal debtors who have received ostensible loans, real douceurs-never to be repaid, except in dishonorable services. He considers the praises of the country bankers as the unwilling homage of the weak and helpless to the corrupt and powerful. He assimilates the Bank of England, by the terrors which it inspires, to the old Bastile in France, and anticipates the same burst of emancipated joy on the fall of the bank, which was heard in France on the fall of the Bastile. And is he not right? And may not every word of his invective be applied to the British bank in America, and find its appropriate application in well-known, and incontestable facts here? Well has he likened it to the Bastile; well will the term apply in our own country. Great is the fear and terror now inspired by this bank. Si

which are impatient for the downfall of the monument of despotism, that they may break forth into joy and thanksgiving. The real Bastile was terrible to all France; the figurative Bastile is terrible to all America; but above all to the West, where the duplicate senators of Kentucky and Massachusetts, have pointed to the reign of terror that is approaching, and drawn up the victims for an anticipated immolation. But, exclaimed Mr. B., this is the month of July; a month auspicious to liberty, and fatal to Bastiles. Our dependence on the crown of Great Britain ceased in the month of July; the Bastile in France fell in the month of July, Charles X. was chased from France by the three glorious days of July; and the veto message, which is the Declaration of Independence against the British bank, originated on the fourth of July, and is the signal for the downfall of the American Bastile, and the end of despotism. The time is auspicious; the work will go on; down with the British bank; down with the Bastile; away with the tyrant, will be the patriotic cry of Americans; and down it will go.

"The duplicate senators, said Mr. B., have occupied themselves with criticising the President's idea of the obligation of his oath in construing the constitution for himself. They also think that the President ought to be bound, the Congress ought to be bound, to take the consti