BANK OF THE UNITED STATES.
It has been already shown that General Jackson in his first annual
message to Congress, called in question both the constitutionality
and expediency of the national bank, in a way to show him averse to
the institution, and disposed to see the federal government carried
on without the aid of such an assistant. In the same message he
submitted the question to Congress, that, _if_ such an institution
is deemed essential to the fiscal operations of the government,
whether a national one, founded upon the credit of the government,
and its revenues, might not be devised, which would avoid all
constitutional difficulties, and at the same time secure all the
advantages to the government and country that were expected to
result from the present bank. I was not in Washington when this
message was prepared, and had had no conversation with the President
in relation to a substitute for the national bank, or for the
currency which it furnished, and which having a general circulation
was better entitled to the character of "national" than the issues
of the local or State banks. We knew each other's opinions on the
question of a bank itself: but had gone no further. I had never
mentioned to him the idea of reviving the gold currency--then, and
for twenty years--extinct in the United States: nor had I mentioned
to him the idea of an independent or sub-treasury--that is to say,
a government treasury unconnected with any bank--and which was
to have the receiving and disbursing of the public moneys. When
these ideas were mentioned to him, he took them at once; but it
was not until the Bank of the United States should be disposed of
that any thing could be done on these two subjects; and on the
latter a process had to be gone through in the use of local banks
as depositories of the public moneys which required several years
to show its issue and inculcate its lesson. Though strong in the
confidence of the people, the President was not deemed strong enough
to encounter all the banks of all the States at once. Temporizing
was indispensable--and even the conciliation of a part of them.
Hence the deposit system--or some years' use of local banks as
fiscal agents of the government--which gave to the institutions so
selected, the invidious appellation of "_pet banks_;" meaning that
they were government favorites.
In the mean time the question which the President had submitted to
Congress in relation to a government fiscal agent, was seized upon
as an admitted design to establish a government bank--stigmatized
at once as a "thousand times more dangerous" than an incorporated
national bank--and held up to alarm the country. Committees in
each House of Congress, and all the public press in the interest
of the existing Bank of the United States, took it up in that
sense, and vehemently inveighed against it. Under an instruction
to the Finance Committee of the Senate, to report upon a plan for
a uniform currency, and under a reference to the Committee of Ways
and Means of the House, of that part of the President's message
which related to the bank and its currency, most ample, elaborate
and argumentative reports were made--wholly repudiating all the
suggestions of the President, and sustaining the actual Bank of
the United States under every aspect of constitutionality and of
expediency: and strongly presenting it for a renewal of its charter.
These reports were multiplied without regard to expense, or numbers,
in all the varieties of newspaper and pamphlet publication and
lauded to the skies for their power and excellence, and triumphant
refutation of all the President's opinions. Thus was the "war of
the bank" commenced at once, in both Houses of Congress, and in
the public press; and openly at the instance of the bank itself,
which, forgetting its position as an institution of the government,
for the convenience of the government, set itself up for a power,
and struggled for a continued existence--in the shape of a new
charter--as a question of its own, and almost as a right. It
allied itself at the same time to the political party opposed to
the President, joined in all their schemes of protective tariff,
and national internal improvement: and became the head of the
American system. With its moneyed and political power, and numerous
interested affiliations, and its control over other banks, brokers
and money dealers, it was truly a power, and a great one: and, in
answer to a question put by General Smith, of Maryland, chairman
of the Finance Committee of the Senate already mentioned (and
appended with other questions and answers to that report), Mr.
Biddle, the president, showed a power in the national bank to save,
relieve or destroy the local banks, which exhibited it as their
absolute master; and, of course able to control them at will. The
question was put in a spirit of friendship to the bank, and with a
view to enable its president to exhibit the institution as great,
just and beneficent. The question was: "_Has the bank at any time
oppressed any of the State banks?_" and the answer: "_Never._" And,
as if that was not enough, Mr. Biddle went on to say: "_There are
very few banks which might not have been destroyed by an exertion
of the power of the bank. None have been injured. Many have been
saved. And more have been, and are constantly relieved, when it
is found that they are solvent but are suffering under temporary
difficulty._" This was proving entirely too much. A power to injure
and destroy--to relieve and to save the thousand banks of all the
States and Territories was a power over the business and fortunes
of nearly all the people of those States and Territories: and might
be used for evil as well as for good; and was a power entirely too
large to be trusted to any man, with a heart in his bosom--or to any
government, responsible to the people; much less to a corporation
without a soul, and irresponsible to heaven or earth. This was a
view of the case which the parties to the question had not foreseen;
but which was noted at the time; and which, in the progress of the
government struggle with the bank, received exemplifications which
will be remembered by the generation of that day while memory lasts;
and afterwards known as long as history has power to transmit to
posterity the knowledge of national calamities.