be competitors for the favor of the Treasury; and no one who will duly consider the nature of this sort of patronage can fail to perceive, that, in the hands of an ambitious man not possessed of perfect purity and unbending integrity, it would be imminently dangerous to the public liberty. The State Banks would enter the lists of political controversy, with a view to obtain this patronage; and very little sagacity is required to foresee, that, if there should ever happen to be an administration disposed to use its patronage to perpetuate its power, the public funds would be put in jeopardy by being deposited in Banks unworthy of confidence, and the most extensive corruption brought to bear upon the elections throughout the Union. A state of things more adverse to the purity of the government, a power more liable to be abused, can scarcely be imagined. If five millions of dollars were annually placed in the hands of the Secretary of the Treasury, to be distributed, at his discretion, for the purposes of internal improvement, it would not invest him with a more dangerous and corrupting power... "A very grave and solemn question will be presented to Congress, when they come to decide upon the expediency of renewing the charter of the present Bank. That institution has succeeded in carrying the country through the painful process necessary to cure a deep-seated disease in the national currency. The nation, after having suffered the almost convulsive agonies of this necessary remedy, is now restored to perfect health. In this state of things, it will be for Congress to decide whether it is the part of wisdom to expose the country to a degree of suffering almost equal to that which it has already suffered, for the purpose of bringing back that very derangement of the currency which has been remedied by a process as necessary as it was distressing. "If the Bank of the United States were destroyed, and the local institutions left without its restraining influence, the currency would almost certainly relapse into a state of unsoundness. The very pressure which the present Bank, in winding up its concerns, would make upon the local institutions, would compel them either to curtail their discounts, when most needed, or to suspend specie payments. It is not difficult to predict which of these alternatives they would adopt, under the circumstances in which they would be placed. The imperious wants of a suffering community would call for discounts, in language which could not be disregarded. The public necessities would demand, and public opinion would sanction, the suspension, or at least an evasion, of specie payments. "But, even if this desperate resort could be avoided in a period of peace and general prosperity, neither reason nor experience will permit us to doubt that a state of war would speedily bring about all the evils which so fatally affected the credit of the government and the national currency during the late war with Great Britain. We should be again driven to the same miserable round of financial expedients, which, in little more than two years, brought a wealthy community almost to the very brink of a declared national bankruptcy, and placed the government completely at the mercy of speculating stock-jobbers. "The Committee feel warranted, by the past experience of the country, in expressing it as their deliberate opinion, that, in a period of war, the financial resources of the country could not be drawn into efficient operation, without the aid of a National Bank, and that the local Banks would certainly resort to a suspension of specie payments. The maxim is eminently true, in modern times, that money is the sinew of military power. In this view of the subject, it does appear to the Committee that no one of the institutions of the country, not excepting the Army or Navy, is of more vital importance than a National Bank. It has this decided advantage over the Army and Navy: while they are of scarcely any value except in war, the Bank is not less useful than either of them in war, and is also eminently useful in peace. It has another advantage, still greater. If, like the Army or Navy, it should cost the nation millions annually to sustain it, the expediency of the expenditure might be doubted. But when it actually saves to the government and to the country, as the Committee have heretofore attempted to show, more millions annually than are expended in supporting both the Army and Navy, it would seem that, if there were any one measure of national policy, upon which all the political parties of the country should be brought to unite, by the impressive lessons of experience, it is that of maintaining a National Bank." The preceding extracts present, succinctly and intelligibly, the reasons for the creation of both of the Banks; the constitutional objections that were urged; the final abandonment of these in 1816; the services that each Bank rendered both to the government and the people; and the tremendous disasters that were suffered in the interregnum between them. In the four years, the government in its operations made a loss of $54,000,000, from the depreciation of the currency, and in the cost of transfers which had been previously made by the Bank without charge. It had no alternative but to use the notes of the State Banks, no matter the degree of their depreciation. It was only too happy to obtain them at any rate in payment of loans. Coin was not to be had. In the dilemma in which all-government and people were alike placed, a new United States Bank seemed the only escape from utter ruin. If the former, with expenditures equalling only about $25,000,000 yearly, suffered a loss of $54,000,000 from a depreciated currency, how vast must have been that of the people whose transactions were tenfold greater! Those of the former were restricted in time to about three years; while nearly fifteen were required to restore the financial condition of the country to that existing at the expiration of the charter of the first - Bank. The reduction of the currency from $110,000,000, according to Mr. Crawford, to $45,000,000, in the short period of three years, is sufficient evidence of the terrible waste and destruction which all contemporaneous writers describe. In spite of all the efforts that the Bank could exert, vast numbers of State Banks were, for a long time after its organization, constantly coming into and going out of existence. It was not till after 1826 that the financial condition of the country seemed fully restored. The report of the House Committee was generally accepted as effectually disposing of the attack by the President upon the Bank. Its friends, however, counted wholly without their host. They knew little of the man with whom they had to deal, and as little of the causes already at work which were to produce an outburst of fanaticism that was to sweep with resistless fury over the nation. Jefferson, who had carried the doctrine of nullification to the extremest limits short of an overt act,' was followed by Presidents, who, from their characters rather than from purpose, tended to restore the government to the model of Washington and Hamilton. Madisonwho earnestly opposed, on constitutional grounds, the chartering of the first Bank; and who, as a member of the Legislature of Virginia, wrote an elaborate report in vindication of the Resolutions of 1798-wholly abandoned his former position, by recommending, and affixing his signature to, the Act incorporating, in 1816, the second Bank. His reasons were those which should influence and control the judgment of every rightminded man, the uniform precedents, through a long series of years, of the National Legislature, and of the legal tribunal of last resort. Monroe followed by the approval of the Bill making provision for elaborate surveys, with a view to the construction of extended lines of public works. Under such administrations, which accepted the precedents of the past as their guide, and which left the articulations of the people almost wholly free, the nation entered upon a period of natural and orderly development, inferring the functions of government from the advantages resulting from their exercise. Such is the inference of every people capable of order and progress. 1 After his accession to the Presidency, he discharged from custody parties held under the Alien and Sedition Laws, on the ground that such laws were void from their unconstitutionality. - This tendency, thoroughly pronounced, caused the greatest consternation on the part of Jefferson, who lost not a moment in sounding the alarm that the country, under the loose construction of the Constitution which was everywhere prevailing, was tending toward consolidation and monarchy, — all, however, for a time to very little purpose. So long as Virginians occupied the presidential chair, it was very difficult to revive the old, or divide the country upon new, issues. During the latter part of Mr. Monroe's administration, political parties seemed to have wholly disappeared. He had returned to the sentiments and practice of one, without seeming to have deserted those of the other. To him succeeded the second Adams, not by the choice of the people, but by that of Congress. His election was the signal for the immediate revival of the old parties, with all their former bitterness. In place of Virginians, the laxity of whose political morals could be overlooked out of respect to their citizenship, services, and character, came a Puritan of the Puritans, severe in his manners and life, of all men the most obnoxious to the South; and who, to crown all, was far more free in the construction of the Constitution than Hamilton himself.1 His election was an insult to the ideas, institutions, and dignity of the South. It was an accident resulting from want of proper precaution and organization, and was by no means to be allowed to happen a second time. The unanimity and earnestness with which Mr. Adams was opposed at the South, and the ease with which, by the help of Northern allies, he was defeated when he ran for a second 1 "The question of the power of Congress to authorize the making of internal improvements is, in other words, a question whether the people of this Union, in forming their common social compact, as avowedly for the purpose of promoting their general welfare, have performed their work in a manner so ineffably stupid as to deny themselves the means of bettering their own condition. I have too much respect for the intellect of my country to believe it. The first object of human association is the improvement of the condition of the associated. Roads and canals are among the essential means of improving the condition of nations; and a people which should deliberately, by the organization of its authorized power, deprive itself of the faculty of multiplying its own blessings, would be as wise as a creator who should undertake to constitute a human being without a head."-Letter of John Quincy Adams, Niles' Register, vol. xxvi. p. 251. Nothing could excite greater alarm and opposition at the South than such sentiments as these. Their adoption would be nothing less than a government of the majority, which might know no other law than the promotion of its real or fancied welfare. term, taught a lesson which was only too well heeded; which was, to form a party based upon Southern ideas, which could undergo no change so long as their chief institution remained. Never, apparently, was there a firmer foundation upon which to build, and never a combination which promised to yield to both parties more satisfactory results. The South was content, as a means of preserving slavery, with the construction of the Constitution, and with the privilege of defining the nature of the general government. All this their Northern allies freely conceded, for the possession of the public patronage. "The South was to be secured by going with the South, and the North by party machinery," was a maxim in politics which grew out of this combination for a partition of the government and its patronage. At the time of which we are speaking, "strict construction" was felt to be of far more importance to the South than in 1791. Time had only served to increase the differences between the two great sections of the country, two nations from the beginning. During the early part of Mr. Adams' administration took place the famous experiment on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in England, -the most important event in modern times, as it demonstrated the practicability of the use of steam as a locomotive power. The preceding half century had been greatly distinguished by the prodigious progress made in the useful arts. The North caught, in full measure, the spirit abroad in other lands, and welcomed the new helps which the inventive genius of the race had brought to its aid, many of which possessed a peculiar value in a country like their own. One great want was public highways, to give a value to the products of the soil. To encourage manufactures, protective tariffs were enacted. In all such measures to be undertaken by the general government, the South, which blindfolded labor in order to keep it in ignorance and contented with its lot, saw no advantage but to their rivals; who were to increase in numbers and strength at their cost, from the use of contrivances and methods for which they were to be taxed, but in the benefits resulting from which they could have little share. Hence the redoubled earnestness with which they pressed the doctrine of "strict construction," and the unconstitutionality of the Bank. The Northern wing of the party readily yielded to all demands in this direction, not only as the price of the |