Chapter LVI (2)

"One word more upon the subject of these balances. It is now two
years since I made an effort to repeal the 4th section of the
Sinking Fund act of 1817; a section which was intended to limit
the amount of surplus money which might be kept in the treasury,
to two millions of dollars; but, by the power of construction,
was made to authorize the keeping of two millions in addition
to the surplus. I wished to repeal this section, which had
thus been construed into the reverse of its intention, and to
revive the first section of the Sinking Fund act of 1790, which
directed the whole of the surplus on hand to be applied, at the
end of each year, to the payment of the public debt. My argument
was this: that there was no necessity to keep any surplus;
that the revenue, coming in as fast as it went out, was like a
perennial fountain, which you might drain to the last drop, and
not exhaust; for the place of the last drop would be supplied
the instant it was out. And I supported this reasoning by a
reference to the annual treasury reports, which always exhibit
a surplus of four or five millions; and which were equally in
the treasury the whole year round, as on the last day of every
year. This was the argument, which in fact availed nothing;
but now I have mathematical proof of the truth of my position.
Look at this statement of balances; look for the year 1819,
and you will find but three hundred thousand dollars on hand
for that year; look still lower for 1821, and you will find
this balance but one hundred and eighty-two thousand dollars.
And what was the consequence? Did the Government stop? Did the
wheels of the State chariot cease to turn round in those years
for want of treasury oil? Not at all. Every thing went on as
well as before; the operations of the treasury were as perfect
and regular in those two years of insignificant balances, as in
1817 and 1818, when five and ten millions were on hand. This is
proof; this is demonstration; it is the indubitable evidence of
the senses which concludes argument, and dispels uncertainty;
and, as my proposal for the repeal of the 4th Section of the
Sinking Fund act of 1817 was enacted into a law at the last
session of Congress, upon the recommendation of the Secretary
of the Treasury, a vigilant and exemplary officer, I trust that
the repeal will be acted upon, and that the bank platter will be
wiped as clean of federal money in 1831, as it was in 1821. Such
clean-taking from that dish will allow two or three millions
more to go to the reduction of the public debt; and there can be
no danger in taking the last dollar, as reason and experience
both prove. But, to quiet every apprehension on this point, to
silence the last suggestion of a possibility of any temporary
deficit, I recur to a provision contained in two different
clauses in the bank charter, copied from an amendment in the
charter of the Bank of England, and expressly made, at the
instance of the ministry, to meet the contingency of a temporary
deficiency in the annual revenue. The English provision is
this: that the government may borrow of the bank half a million
sterling, at any time, without a special act of parliament to
authorize it. The provision in our charter is the same, with the
single substitution of dollars for pounds. It is, in words and
intention, a standing authority to borrow that limited sum, for
the obvious purpose of preventing a constant keeping of a sum of
money in hand as a reserve, to meet contingencies which hardly
ever occur. This contingent authority to effect a small loan
has often been used in England--in the United States, never;
possibly, because there has been no occasion for it; probably,
because the clause was copied mechanically from the English
charter, and without the perception of its practical bearing. Be
this as it may, it is certainly a wise and prudent provision,
such as all governments should, at all times be clothed with.

"If any senator thinks that I have exaggerated the injury
suffered by the United States, on account of the uncompensated
masses of public money in the hands of the bank, I am now going
to convince him that he is wrong. I am going to prove to him
that I have understated the case; that I have purposely kept
back a large part of it; and that justice requires a further
development. The fact is, that there are two different deposits
of public money in the bank; one in the name of the Treasurer of
the United States, the other in the name of disbursing officers.
The annual average of the former has been about three and a half
millions of dollars, and of this I have said not a word. But
the essential character of both deposits is the same; they are
both the property of the United States; both permanent; both
available as so much capital to the bank; and both uncompensated.

"I have not ascertained the average of these deposits since
1817, but presume it may equal the amount of that _bonus_ of
one million five hundred thousand dollars for which we sold
the charter, and which the Finance Committee of the Senate
compliments the bank for paying in three, instead of seventeen,
annual instalments; and shows how much interest they lost by
doing so. Certainly, this was a disadvantage to the bank.

"Mr. President, it does seem to me that there is something
ominous to the bank in this contest for compensation on the
undrawn balances. It is the very way in which the struggle began
in the British Parliament which has ended in the overthrow of
the Bank of England. It is the way in which the struggle is
beginning here. My resolutions of two and three years ago are
the causes of the speech which you now hear; and, as I have
reason to believe, some others more worthy of your hearing,
which will come at the proper time. The question of compensation
for balances is now mixing itself up here, as in England, with
the question of renewing the charter; and the two, acting
together, will fall with combined weight upon the public mind,
and certainly eventuate here as they did there.

"4. To discredit and disparage the notes of all other banks, by
excluding them from the collection of the federal revenue. This
results from the collection--no, not the collection, but the
receipt of the revenue having been communicated to the bank,
and along with it the virtual execution of the joint resolution
of 1816, to regulate the collection of the federal revenue.
The execution of that resolution was intended to be vested in
the Secretary of the Treasury--a disinterested arbiter between
rival banks; but it may be considered as virtually devolved upon
the Bank of the United States, and powerfully increases the
capacity of that institution to destroy, or subjugate, all other
banks. This power to disparage the notes of all other banks, is
a power to injure them; and, added to all the other privileges
of the Bank of the United States, is a power to destroy them!
If any one doubts this assertion, let him read the answers of
the president of the bank to the questions put to him by the
chairman of the Finance Committee. These answers are appended
to the committee's report of the last session in favor of the
bank, and expressly declare the capacity of the federal bank to
destroy the State banks. The worthy chairman [Mr. Smith, of Md.]
puts this question; 'Has the bank at any time oppressed any of
the State banks.' The president [Mr. Biddle] answers, as the
whole world would answer to a question of oppression, that it
never had; and this response was as much as the interrogatory
required. But it did not content the president of the bank; he
chose to go further, and to do honor to the institution over
which he presided, by showing that it was as just and generous
as it was rich and powerful. He, therefore, adds the following
words, for which, as a seeker after evidence, to show the
alarming and dangerous character of the bank, I return him my
unfeigned thanks: 'There are very few banks which might not have
been destroyed by an exertion of the power of the bank.'

"This is enough! proof enough! not for me alone, but for all
who are unwilling to see a moneyed domination set up--a moneyed
oligarchy established in this land, and the entire Union
subjected to its sovereign will. The power to destroy all other
banks is admitted and declared; the inclination to do so is
known to all rational beings to reside with the power! Policy
may restrain the destroying faculties for the present; but they
exist; and will come forth when interest prompts and policy
permits. They have been exercised; and the general prostration
of the Southern and Western banks attest the fact. They will be
exercised (the charter being renewed), and the remaining State
banks will be swept with the besom of destruction. Not that all
will have their signs knocked down, and their doers closed up.
Far worse than that to many of them. Subjugation, in preference
to destruction, will be the fate of many. Every planet must
have its satellites; every tyranny must have its instruments;
every knight is followed by his squire; even the king of beasts,
the royal quadruped, whose roar subdues the forest, must have
a small, subservient animal to spring his prey. Just so of
this imperial bank, when installed anew in its formidable and
lasting power. The State banks, spared by the sword, will be
passed under the yoke. They will become subordinate parts in the
great machine. Their place in the scale of subordination will
be one degree below the rank of the legitimate branches; their
business, to perform the work which it would be too disreputable
for the legitimate branches to perform. This will be the fate of
the State banks which are allowed to keep up their signs, and to
set open their doors; and thus the entire moneyed power of the
Union would fall into the hands of one single institution, whose
inexorable and invisible mandates, emanating from a centre,
would pervade the Union, giving or withholding money according
to its own sovereign will and absolute pleasure. To a favored
State, to an individual, or a class of individuals, favored
by the central power, the golden stream of Pactolus would
flow direct. To all such the munificent mandates of the High
Directory would come, as the fabled god made his terrestrial
visit of love and desire, enveloped in a shower of gold. But to
others--to those not favored--and to those hated--the mandates
of this same directory would be as 'the planetary plague which
hangs its poison in the sick air;' death to them! death to all
who minister to their wants! What a state of things! What a
condition for a confederacy of States! What grounds for alarm
and terrible apprehension, when in a confederacy of such vast
extent, so many independent States, so many rival commercial
cities, so much sectional jealousy, such violent political
parties, such fierce contests for power, there should be but
one moneyed tribunal, before which all the rival and contending
elements must appear! but one single dispenser of money, to
which every citizen, every trader, every merchant, every
manufacturer, every planter, every corporation, every city,
every State, and the federal government itself, must apply, in
every emergency, for the most indispensable loan! and this, in
the face of the fact, that, in every contest for human rights,
the great moneyed institutions of the world have uniformly been
found on the side of kings and nobles, against the lives and
liberties of the people;

"5. To hold real estate, receive rents, and retain a body
of tenantry. This privilege is hostile to the nature of our
republican government, and inconsistent with the nature and
design of a banking institution. Republics want freeholders,
not landlords and tenants; and, except the corporators in this
bank, and in the British East India Company, there is not an
incorporated body of landlords in any country upon the face
of the earth whose laws emanate from a legislative body. Banks
are instituted to promote trade and industry, and to aid the
government and its citizens with loans of money. The whole
argument in favor of banking--every argument in favor of this
bank--rests upon that idea. No one, when this charter was
granted, presumed to speak in favor of incorporating a society
of landlords, especially foreign landlords, to buy lands, build
houses, rent tenements, and retain tenantry. Loans of money
was the object in view, and the purchase of real estate is
incompatible with that object. Instead of remaining bankers,
the corporators may turn land speculators: instead of having
money to lend, they may turn you out tenants to vote. To an
application for a loan, they may answer, and answer truly, that
they have no money on hand; and the reason may be, that they
have laid it out in land. This seems to be the case at present.
A committee of the legislature of Pennsylvania has just applied
for a loan; the president of the bank, nothing loth to make
a loan to that great State, for twenty years longer than the
charter has to exist, expresses his regret that he cannot lend
but a limited and inadequate sum. The funds of the institution,
he says, will not permit it to advance more than eight millions
of dollars. And why? because it has invested three millions in
real estate! To this power to hold real estate, is superadded
the means to acquire it. The bank is now the greatest moneyed
power in the Union; in the event of the renewal of its charter,
it will soon be the sole one. Sole dispenser of money, it
will soon be the chief owner of property. To unlimited means
of acquisition, would be united perpetuity of tenure; for a
corporation never dies, and is free from the operation of the
laws which govern the descent and distribution of real estate
in the hands of individuals. The limitations in the charter are
vain and illusory. They insult the understanding, and mock the
credulity of foolish believers. The bank is first limited to
such acquisitions of real estate as are necessary to its own
accommodation; then comes a proviso to undo the limitation,
so far as it concerns purchases upon its own mortgages and
executions! This is the limitation upon the capacity of such an
institution to acquire real estate. As if it had any thing to
do but to make loans upon mortgages, and push executions upon
judgments! Having all the money, it would be the sole lender;
mortgages being the road to loans, all borrowers must travel
that road. When birds enough are in the net, the fowler draws
his string, and the heads are wrung off. So when mortgages
enough are taken, the loans are called in; discounts cease;
curtailments are made; failures to pay ensue; writs issue;
judgments and executions follow; all the mortgaged premises are
for sale at once; and the attorney of the bank appears at the
elbow of the marshal, sole bidder and sole purchaser.

"What is the legal effect of this vast capacity to acquire, and
this legal power to retain, real estate? Is it not the creation
of a new species of mortmain? And of a kind more odious and
dangerous than that mortmain of the church which it baffled the
English Parliament so many ages to abolish. The mortmain of the
church was a power in an ecclesiastical corporation to hold real
estate, independent of the laws of distribution and descent:
the mortmain of the bank is a power in a lay corporation to do
the same thing. The evil of the two tenures is identical; the
difference between the two corporations is no more than the
difference between parsons and money-changers; the capacity to
do mischief incomparably the greatest on the part of the lay
corporators. The church could only operate upon the few who
were thinking of the other world; the bank, upon all who are
immersed in the business or the pleasures of this. The means
of the church were nothing but prayers; the means of the bank
is money! The church received what it could beg from dying
sinners; the bank may extort what it pleases from the whole
living generation of the just and unjust. Such is the parallel
between the mortmain of the two corporations. They both end in
monopoly of estates and perpetuity of succession; and the bank
is the greatest monopolizer of the two. Monopolies and perpetual
succession are the bane of republics. Our ancestors took care to
provide against them, by abolishing entails and primogeniture.
Even the glebes of the church, lean and few as they were in
most of the States, fell under the republican principle of
limited tenures. All the States abolished the anti-republican
tenures; but Congress re-establishes them, and in a manner more
dangerous and offensive than before the Revolution. They are
now given, not generally, but to few; not to natives only, but
to foreigners also; for foreigners are large owners of this
bank. And thus, the principles of the Revolution sink before the
privileges of an incorporated company. The laws of the States
fall before the mandates of a central directory in Philadelphia.
Foreigners become the landlords of free-born Americans; and the
young and flourishing towns of the United States are verging
to the fate of the family boroughs which belong to the great
aristocracy of England.

"Let no one say the bank will not avail itself of its capacity
to amass real estate. The fact is, it has already done so. I
know towns, yea, cities, and could name them, if it might not
seem invidious from this elevated theatre to make a public
reference to their misfortunes, in which this bank already
appears as a dominant and engrossing proprietor. I have been in
places where the answers to inquiries for the owners of the most
valuable tenements, would remind you of the answers given by
the Egyptians to similar questions from the French officers, on
their march to Cairo. You recollect, no doubt, sir, the dialogue
to which I allude: 'Who owns that palace?' 'The Mameluke;' 'Who
this country house?' 'The Mameluke;' 'These gardens?' 'The
Mameluke;' 'That field covered with rice?' 'The Mameluke.'--And
thus have I been answered, in the towns and cities referred to,
with the single exception of the name of the Bank of the United
States substituted for that of the military scourge of Egypt. If
this is done under the first charter, what may not be expected
under the second? If this is done while the bank is on its best
behavior, what may she not do when freed from all restraint and
delivered up to the boundless cupidity and remorseless exactions
of a moneyed corporation?

"6. To deal in pawns, merchandise, and bills of exchange. I
hope the Senate will not require me to read dry passages from
the charter to prove what I say. I know I speak a thing nearly
incredible when I allege that this bank, in addition to all its
other attributes, is an incorporated company of pawnbrokers! The
allegation staggers belief, but a reference to the charter will
dispel incredulity. The charter, in the first part, forbids a
traffic in merchandise; in the after part, permits it. For truly
this instrument seems to have been framed upon the principles
of contraries; one principle making limitations, and the other
following after with provisos to undo them. Thus is it with
lands, as I have just shown; thus is it with merchandise, as I
now show. The bank is forbidden to deal in merchandise--proviso,
unless in the case of goods pledged for money lent, and not
redeemed to the day; and, proviso, again, unless for goods
which shall be the proceeds of its lands. With the help of
these two provisos, it is clear that the limitation is undone;
it is clear that the bank is at liberty to act the pawnbroker
and merchant, to any extent that it pleases. It may say to all
the merchants who want loans, Pledge your stores, gentlemen!
They must do it, or do worse; and, if any accident prevents
redemption on the day, the pawn is forfeited, and the bank takes
possession. On the other hand, it may lay out its rents for
goods; it may sell its real estate, now worth three millions of
dollars, for goods. Thus the bank is an incorporated company
of pawnbrokers and merchants, as well as an incorporation of
landlords and land-speculators; and this derogatory privilege,
like the others, is copied from the old Bank of England charter
of 1694. Bills of exchange are also subjected to the traffic
of this bank. It is a traffic unconnected with the trade of
banking, dangerous for a great bank to hold, and now operating
most injuriously in the South and West. It is the process which
drains these quarters of the Union of their gold and silver,
and stifles the growth of a fair commerce in the products of
the country. The merchants, to make remittances, buy bills of
exchange from the branch banks, instead of buying produce from
the farmers. The bills are paid for in gold and silver; and,
eventually, the gold and silver are sent to the mother bank,
or to the branches in the Eastern cities, either to meet these
bills, or to replenish their coffers, and to furnish vast
loans to favorite States or individuals. The bills sell cheap,
say a fraction of one per cent.; they are, therefore, a good
remittance to the merchant. To the bank the operation is doubly
good; for even the half of one per cent. on bills of exchange
is a great profit to the institution which monopolizes that
business, while the collection and delivery to the branches of
all the hard money in the country is a still more considerable
advantage. Under this system, the best of the Western banks--I
do not speak of those which had no foundations, and sunk under
the weight of neighborhood opinion, but those which deserved
favor and confidence--sunk ten years ago. Under this system,
the entire West is now undergoing a silent, general, and
invisible drain of its hard money; and, if not quickly arrested,
these States will soon be, so far as the precious metals are
concerned, no more than the empty skin of an immolated victim.

"7. To establish branches in the different States without
their consent, and in defiance of their resistance. No one can
deny the degrading and injurious tendency of this privilege.
It derogates from the sovereignty of a State; tramples upon
her laws; injures her revenue and commerce; lays open her
government to the attacks of centralism; impairs the property
of her citizens; and fastens a vampire on her bosom to suck
out her gold and silver. 1. It derogates from her sovereignty,
because the central institution may impose its intrusive
branches upon the State without her consent, and in defiance
of her resistance. This has already been done. The State of
Alabama, but four years ago, by a resolve of her legislature,
remonstrated against the intrusion of a branch upon her.
She protested against the favor. Was the will of the State
respected? On the contrary, was not a branch instantaneously
forced upon her, as if, by the suddenness of the action, to
make a striking and conspicuous display of the omnipotence of
the bank, and the nullity of the State? 2. It tramples upon
her laws; because, according to the decision of the Supreme
Court, the bank and all its branches are wholly independent
of State legislation; and it tramples on them again, because
it authorizes foreigners to hold lands and tenements in every
State, contrary to the laws of many of them; and because it
admits of the _mortmain_ tenure, which is condemned by all the
republican States in the Union. 3. It injures her revenue,
because the bank stock, under the decision of the Supreme
Court, is not liable to taxation. And thus, foreigners, and
non-resident Americans, who monopolize the money of the State,
who hold its best lands and town lots, who meddle in its
elections, and suck out its gold and silver, and perform no
military duty, are exempted from paying taxes, in proportion
to their wealth, for the support of the State whose laws they
trample upon, and whose benefits they usurp. 4. It subjects the
State to the dangerous manoeuvres and intrigues of centralism,
by means of the tenants, debtors, bank officers, and bank
money, which the central directory retain in the State, and
may embody and direct against it in its elections, and in its
legislative and judicial proceedings. 5. It tends to impair
the property of the citizens, and, in some instances, that of
the States, by destroying the State banks in which they have
invested their money. 6. It is injurious to the commerce of
the States (I speak of the Western States), by substituting a
trade in bills of exchange, for a trade in the products of the
country. 7. It fastens a vampire on the bosom of the State,
to suck away its gold and silver, and to co-operate with the
course of trade, of federal legislation, and of exchange,
in draining the South and West of all their hard money. The
Southern States, with their thirty millions of annual exports in
cotton, rice, and tobacco, and the Western States, with their
twelve millions of provisions and tobacco exported from New
Orleans, and five millions consumed in the South, and on the
lower Mississippi,--that is to say, with three fifths of the
marketable productions of the Union, are not able to sustain
thirty specie paying banks; while the minority of the States
north of the Potomac, without any of the great staples for
export, have above four hundred of such banks. These States,
without rice, without cotton, without tobacco, without sugar,
and with less flour and provisions, to export, are saturated
with gold and silver; while the Southern and Western States,
with all the real sources of wealth, are in a state of the
utmost destitution. For this calamitous reversal of the natural
order of things, the Bank of the United States stands forth
pre-eminently culpable. Yes, it is pre-eminently culpable! and
a statement in the 'National Intelligencer' of this morning
(a paper which would overstate no fact to the prejudice of
the bank), cites and proclaims the fact which proves this
culpability. It dwells, and exults, on the quantity of gold and
silver in the vaults of the United States Bank. It declares
that institution to be 'overburdened' with gold and silver; and
well may it be so overburdened, since it has lifted the load
entirely from the South and West. It calls these metals 'a drug'
in the hands of the bank; that is to say, an article for which
no purchaser can be found. Let this 'drug,' like the treasures
of the dethroned Dey of Algiers, be released from the dominion
of its keeper; let a part go back to the South and West, and the
bank will no longer complain of repletion, nor they of depletion.

"8. Exemption of the stockholders from individual liability
on the failure of the bank. This privilege derogates from the
common law, is contrary to the principle of partnerships, and
injurious to the rights of the community. It is a peculiar
privilege granted by law to these corporators, and exempting
them from liability, except in their corporate capacity, and to
the amount of the assets of the corporation. Unhappily these
assets are never _assez_, that is to say, enough, when occasion
comes for recurring to them. When a bank fails, its assets are
always less than its debts; so that responsibility fails the
instant that liability accrues. Let no one say that the bank of
the United States is too great to fail. One greater than it,
and its prototype, has failed, and that in our own day, and for
twenty years at a time: the Bank of England failed in 1797,
and the Bank of the United States was on the point of failing
in 1819. The same cause, namely, stockjobbing and overtrading,
carried both to the brink of destruction; the same means saved
both, namely, the name, the credit, and the helping hand of
the governments which protected them. Yes, the Bank of the
United States may fail; and its stockholders live in splendor
upon the princely estates acquired with its notes, while the
industrious classes, who hold these notes, will be unable to
receive a shilling for them. This is unjust. It is a vice in the
charter. The true principle in banking requires each stockholder
to be liable to the amount of his shares; and subjects him
to the summary action of every holder on the failure of the
institution, till he has paid up the amount of his subscription.
This is the true principle. It has prevailed in Scotland for the
last century, and no such thing as a broken bank has been known
there in all that time.

"9. To have the United States for a partner. Sir, there is one
consequence, one result of all partnerships between a government
and individuals, which should of itself, and in a mere
mercantile point of view, condemn this association on the part
of the federal government. It is the principle which puts the
strong partner forward to bear the burden whenever the concern
is in danger. The weaker members flock to the strong partner at
the approach of the storm, and the necessity of venturing more
to save what he has already staked, leaves him no alternative.
He becomes the Atlas of the firm, and bears all upon his own
shoulders. This is the principle: what is the fact? Why, that
the United States has already been compelled to sustain the
federal bank; to prop it with her revenues and its credit in
the trials and crisis of its early administration. I pass over
other instances of the damage suffered by the United States on
account of this partnership; the immense standing deposits for
which we receive no compensation; the loan of five millions of
our own money, for which we have paid a million and a half in
interest; the five per cent. stock note, on which we have paid
our partners four million seven hundred and twenty-five thousand
dollars in interest; the loss of ten millions on the three per
cent. stock, and the ridiculous catastrophe of the miserable
_bonus_, which has been paid to us with a fraction of our own
money: I pass over all this, and come to the point of a direct
loss, as a partner, in the dividends upon the stock itself.
Upon this naked point of profit and loss, to be decided by a
rule in arithmetic, we have sustained a direct and heavy loss.
The stock held by the United States, as every body knows, was
subscribed, not paid. It was a stock note, deposited for seven
millions of dollars, bearing an interest of five per cent. The
inducement to this subscription was the seductive conception
that, by paying five per cent. on its note, the United States
would clear four or five per cent. in getting a dividend of
eight or ten. This was the inducement; now for the realization
of this fine conception. Let us see it. Here it is; an official
return, from the Register of the Treasury of interest paid, and
of dividends received. The account stands thus:

Interest paid by the United States, $4,725,000
Dividends received by the United States, 4,629,426
----------
Loss to the United States, $95,574

"Disadvantageous as this partnership must be to the United
States in a moneyed point of view, there is a far more grave
and serious aspect under which to view it. It is the political
aspect, resulting from the union between the bank and the
government. This union has been tried in England, and has been
found there to be just as disastrous a conjunction as the
union between church and state. It is the conjunction of the
lender and the borrower, and Holy Writ has told us which of
these categories will be master of the other. But suppose they
agree to drop rivalry, and unite their resources. Suppose they
combine, and make a push for political power: how great is the
mischief which they may not accomplish! But, on this head,
I wish to use the language of one of the brightest patriots
of Great Britain; one who has shown himself, in these modern
days, to be the worthy successor of those old iron barons whose
patriotism commanded the unpurchasable eulogium of the elder
Pitt. I speak of Sir William Pulteney, and his speech against
the Bank of England, in 1797.

"THE SPEECH:--EXTRACT.

"'I have said enough to show that government has been rendered
dependent on the bank, and more particularly so in the time of
war; and though the bank has not yet fallen into the hands of
ambitious men, yet it is evident that it might, in such hands,
assume a power sufficient to control and overawe, not only the
ministers, but king, lords, and commons. * * * * * * As the bank
has thus become dangerous to government, it might, on the other
hand, by uniting with an ambitious minister, become the means of
establishing a fourth estate, sufficient to involve this nation
in irretrievable slavery, and ought, therefore, to be dreaded
as much as a certain East India bill was justly dreaded, at a
period not very remote. I will not say that the present minister
(the younger Pitt), by endeavoring, at this crisis, to take the
Bank of England under his protection, can have any view to make
use, hereafter, of that engine to perpetuate his own power, and
to enable him to domineer over our constitution: if that could
be supposed, it would only show that men can entertain a very
different train of ideas, when endeavoring to overset a rival,
from what occurs to them when intending to support and fix
themselves. My object is to secure the country against all risk
either from the bank as opposed to government, or as the engine
of ambitious men.'

"And this is my object also. I wish to secure the Union from all
chance of harm from this bank. I wish to provide against its
friendship, as well as its enmity--against all danger from its
hug, as well as from its blow. I wish to provide against all
risk, and every hazard; for, if this risk and hazard were too
great to be encountered by King, Lords, and Commons, in Great
Britain, they must certainly be too great to be encountered by
the people of the United States, who are but commons alone.

"10. To have foreigners for partners. This, Mr. President,
will be a strange story to be told in the West. The downright
and upright people of that unsophisticated region believe that
words mean what they signify, and that 'the Bank of the United
States' is the Bank of the United States. How great then must
be their astonishment to learn that this belief is a false
conception, and that this bank (its whole name to the contrary
notwithstanding) is just as much the bank of foreigners as
it is of the federal government. Here I would like to have
the proof--a list of the names and nations, to establish this
almost incredible fact. But I have no access except to public
documents, and from one of these I learn as much as will answer
the present pinch. It is the report of the Committee of Ways and
Means, in the House of Representatives, for the last session of
Congress. That report admits that foreigners own seven millions
of the stock of this bank; and every body knows that the federal
government owns seven millions also.

"Thus it is proved that foreigners are as deeply interested in
this bank as the United States itself. In the event of a renewal
of the charter they will be much more deeply interested than at
present; for a prospect of a rise in the stock to two hundred
and fifty, and the unsettled state of things in Europe, will
induce them to make great investments. It is to no purpose to
say that the foreign stockholders cannot be voters or directors.
The answer to that suggestion is this: the foreigners have the
money; they pay down the cash, and want no accommodations; they
are lenders, not borrowers; and in a great moneyed institution,
such stockholders must have the greatest influence. The name
of this bank is a deception upon the public. It is not the
bank of the federal government, as its name would import, nor
of the States which compose this Union; but chiefly of private
individuals, foreigners as well as natives, denizens, and
naturalized subjects. They own twenty-eight millions of the
stock, the federal government but seven millions, and these
seven are precisely balanced by the stock of the aliens. The
federal government and the aliens are equal, owning one fifth
each; and there would be as much truth in calling it the English
Bank as the Bank of the United States. Now mark a few of the
privileges which this charter gives to these foreigners. To be
landholders, in defiance of the State laws, which forbid aliens
to hold land; to be landlords by incorporation, and to hold
American citizens for tenants; to hold lands in mortmain; to be
pawnbrokers and merchants by incorporation; to pay the revenue
of the United States in their own notes; in short, to do every
thing which I have endeavored to point out in the long and
hideous list of exclusive privileges granted to this bank. If
I have shown it to be dangerous for the United States to be in
partnership with its own citizens, how much stronger is not the
argument against a partnership with foreigners? What a prospect
for loans when at war with a foreign power, and the subjects of
that power large owners of the bank here, from which alone, or
from banks liable to be destroyed by it, we can obtain money to
carry on the war! What a state of things, if, in the division
of political parties, one of these parties and the foreigners,
coalescing, should have the exclusive control of all the money
in the Union, and, in addition to the money, should have bodies
of debtors, tenants, and bank officers stationed in all the
States, with a supreme and irresponsible system of centralism to
direct the whole! Dangers from such contingencies are too great
and obvious to be insisted upon. They strike the common sense
of all mankind, and were powerful considerations with the old
whig republicans for the non-renewal of the charter of 1791.
Mr. Jefferson and the whig republicans staked their political
existence on the non-renewal of that charter. They succeeded;
and, by succeeding, prevented the country from being laid at the
mercy of British and ultra-federalists for funds to carry on the
last war. It is said the United States lost forty millions by
using depreciated currency during the last war. That, probably,
is a mistake of one half. But be it so! For what are forty
millions compared to the loss of the war itself--compared to the
ruin and infamy of having the government arrested for want of
money--stopped and paralyzed by the reception of such a note as
the younger Pitt received from the Bank of England in 1795?

"11. Exemption from due course of law for violations of its
charter.--This is a privilege which affects the administration
of justice, and stands without example in the annals of
republican legislation. In the case of all other delinquents,
whether persons or corporations, the laws take their course
against those who offend them. It is the right of every citizen
to set the laws in motion against every offender; and it is the
constitution of the law, when set in motion, to work through,
like a machine, regardless of powers and principalities, and
cutting down the guilty which may stand in its way. Not so in
the case of this bank. In its behalf, there are barriers erected
between the citizen and his oppressor, between the wrong and the
remedy, between the law and the offender. Instead of a right
to sue out a _scire facias_ or a _quo warranto_, the injured
citizen, with an humble petition in his hand, must repair to
the President of the United States, or to Congress, and crave
their leave to do so. If leave is denied (and denied it will be
whenever the bank has a peculiar friend in the President, or a
majority of such friends in Congress, the convenient pretext
being always at hand that the general welfare requires the bank
to be sustained), he can proceed no further. The machinery of
the law cannot be set in motion, and the great offender laughs
from behind his barrier at the impotent resentment of its
helpless victim. Thus the bank, for the plainest violations
of its charter, and the greatest oppressions of the citizen,
may escape the pursuit of justice. Thus the administration
of justice is subject to be strangled in its birth for the
shelter and protection of this bank. But this is not all.
Another and most alarming mischief results from the same
extraordinary privilege. It gives the bank a direct interest in
the presidential and congressional elections: it gives it need
for friends in Congress and in the presidential chair. Its fate,
its very existence, may often depend upon the friendship of the
President and Congress; and, in such cases, it is not in human
nature to avoid using the immense means in the hands of the bank
to influence the elections of these officers. Take the existing
fact--the case to which I alluded at the commencement of this
speech. There is a case made out, ripe with judicial evidence,
and big with the fate of the bank. It is a case of usury at the
rate of forty-six per cent., in violation of the charter, which
only admits an interest of six. The facts were admitted, in the
court below, by the bank's demurrer; the law was decided, in
the court above, by the supreme judges. The admission concludes
the facts; the decision concludes the law. The forfeiture of
the charter is established; the forfeiture is incurred; the
application of the forfeiture alone is wanting to put an end to
the institution. An impartial President or Congress might let
the laws take their course; those of a different temper might
interpose their veto. What a crisis for the bank! It beholds the
sword of Damocles suspended over its head! What an interest in
keeping those away who might suffer the hair to be cut!

"12. To have all these unjust privileges secured to the
corporators as a monopoly, by a pledge of the public faith to
charter no other bank.--This is the most hideous feature in
the whole mass of deformity. If these banks are beneficial
institutions, why not several? one, at least, and each
independent of the other, to each great section of the Union?
If malignant, why create one? The restriction constitutes the
monopoly, and renders more invidious what was sufficiently
hateful in itself. It is, indeed, a double monopoly, legislative
as well as banking; for the Congress of 1816 monopolized the
power to grant these monopolies. It has tied up the hands
of its successors; and if this can be done on one subject,
and for twenty years, why not upon all subjects, and for all
time? Here is the form of words which operate this double
engrossment of our rights: 'No other bank shall be established
by any future law of Congress, during the continuance of the
corporation hereby enacted, for which the faith of Congress is
hereby pledged;' with a proviso for the District of Columbia.
And that no incident might be wanting to complete the title of
this charter, to the utter reprobation of whig republicans,
this compound monopoly, and the very form of words in which
it is conceived, is copied from the charter of the Bank of
England!--not the charter of William and Mary, as granted in
1694 (for the Bill of Rights was then fresh in the memories of
Englishmen), but the charter as amended, and that for money, in
the memorable reign of Queen Anne, when a tory queen, a tory
ministry, and a tory parliament, and the apostle of toryism, in
the person of Dr. Sacheverell, with his sermons of divine right,
passive obedience, and non-resistance, were riding and ruling
over the prostrate liberties of England! This is the precious
period, and these the noble authors, from which the idea was
borrowed, and the very form of words copied, which now figure in
the charter of the Bank of the United States, constituting that
double monopoly, which restricts at once the powers of Congress
and the rights of the citizens.

"These, Mr. President, are the chief of the exclusive privileges
which constitute the monopoly of the Bank of the United States.
I have spoken of them, not as they deserved, but as my abilities
have permitted. I have shown you that they are not only evil in
themselves, but copied from an evil example. I now wish to show
you that the government from which we have made this copy has
condemned the original; and, after showing this fact, I think I
shall be able to appeal, with sensible effect, to all liberal
minds, to follow the enlightened example of Great Britain, in
getting rid of a dangerous and invidious institution, after
having followed her pernicious example in assuming it. For
this purpose, I will have recourse to proof, and will read
from British state papers of 1826. I will read extracts from
the correspondence between Earl Liverpool, first Lord of the
Treasury, and Mr. Robinson, Chancellor of the Exchequer, on the
one side, and the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of
England on the other; the subject being the renewal, or rather
non-renewal, of the charter of the Bank of England.

_Communications from the First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Governor and Deputy Governor of the Bank of England.--Extracts._

"'The failures which have occurred in England, unaccompanied
as they have been by the same occurrences in Scotland, tend
to prove that there must have been an unsolid and delusive
system of banking in one part of Great Britain, and a solid
and substantial one in the other. * * * * In Scotland, there
are not more than thirty banks (three chartered), and these
banks have stood firm amidst all the convulsions of the money
market in England, and amidst all the distresses to which the
manufacturing and agricultural interests in Scotland, as well
as in England, have occasionally been subject. Banks of this
description must necessarily be conducted upon the generally
understood and approved principles of banking. * * * * The
Bank of England may, perhaps, propose, as they did upon a
former occasion, the extension of the term of their exclusive
privilege, as to the metropolis and its neighborhood, beyond
the year 1833, as the price of this concession [immediate
surrender of exclusive privileges]. It would be very much to be
regretted that they should require any such condition. * * * *
It is obvious, from what passed before, that Parliament will
never agree to it. * * * * Such privileges are out of fashion;
and what expectation can the bank, under present circumstances,
entertain that theirs will be renewed?'--_Jan. 13._

_Answer of the Court of Directors.--Extract._

"'Under the uncertainty in which the Court of Directors find
themselves with respect to the death of the bank, and the
effect which they may have on the interests of the bank, this
court cannot feel themselves justified in recommending to the
proprietors to give up the privilege which they now enjoy,
sanctioned and confirmed as it is by the solemn acts of the
legislature.'--_Jan. 20._

_Second communication from the Ministers.--Extract._

"'The First Lord of the Treasury and Chancellor of the Exchequer
have considered the answer of the bank of the 20th instant.
They cannot but regret that the Court of Directors should
have declined to recommend to the Court of Proprietors the
consideration of the paper delivered by the First Lord of the
Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer to the Governor and
Deputy Governor on the 13th instant. The statement contained
in that paper appears to the First Lord of the Treasury and
the Chancellor of the Exchequer so full and explicit on all
the points to which it related, that they have nothing further
to add, although they would have been, and still are, ready to
answer, as far as possible, any specific questions which might
be put, for the purpose of removing the uncertainty in which the
court of directors state themselves to be with respect to the
details of the plan suggested in that paper.'--_Jan. 23._

_Second answer of the Bank.--Extract._

"'The Committee of Treasury [bank] having taken into
consideration the paper received from the First Lord of the
Treasury and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, dated January
23d, and finding that His Majesty's ministers persevere in
their desire to propose to restrict immediately the exclusive
privilege of the bank, as to the number of partners engaged in
banking to a certain distance from the metropolis, and also
continue to be of opinion that Parliament would not consent to
renew the privilege at the expiration of the period of their
present charter; finding, also, that the proposal by the bank of
establishing branch banks is deemed by His Majesty's ministers
inadequate to the wants of the country, are of opinion that
it would be desirable for this corporation to propose, as a
basis, the act of 6th of George the Fourth, which states,
the conditions on which the Bank of Ireland relinquished its
exclusive privileges; this corporation waiving the question of
a prolongation of time, although the committee [of the bank]
cannot agree in the opinion of the First Lord of the Treasury
and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, that they are not making
a considerable sacrifice, adverting especially to the Bank of
Ireland remaining in possession of that privilege five years
longer than the Bank of England.'--_January 25._

* * * * *

"Here, Mr. President, is the end of all the exclusive privileges
and odious monopoly of the Bank of England. That ancient and
powerful institution, so long the haughty tyrant of the moneyed
world--so long the subsidizer of kings and ministers--so long
the fruitful mother of national debt and useless wars--so
long the prolific manufactory of nabobs and paupers--so long
the dread dictator of its own terms to parliament--now droops
the conquered wing, lowers its proud crest, and quails under
the blows if its late despised assailants. It first puts on a
courageous air, and takes a stand upon privileges sanctioned by
time, and confirmed by solemn acts. Seeing that the ministers
could have no more to say to men who would talk of privileges in
the nineteenth century, and being reminded that parliament was
inexorable, the bully suddenly degenerates into the craven, and,
from showing fight, calls for quarter. The directors condescend
to beg for the smallest remnant of their former power, for five
years only; for the city of London even; and offer to send
branches into all quarters. Denied at every point, the subdued
tyrant acquiesces in his fate; announces his submission to the
spirit and intelligence of the age; and quietly sinks down
into the humble, but safe and useful condition of a Scottish
provincial bank.