central control, to check the experimental banking operations of the States, and to draw the capitalists of the country and the greater organizers of industry to the active support of the federal government upon grounds

of interest. The second Bank, now under fire from the Executive, had been given the same constitution and function.

The supporters of the Bank were in a measure justified in claiming that it was for such a purpose that the very government itself had been set up. Nothing had

more obviously threatened quick and overwhelming disaster to the country in the days of the Revolution and the Confederation than the reckless financial operations of the States, their unlimited issues of irredeemable paper, their piled up promises and meagre means of redeeming them; and the constitution of the Union had been framed almost as much to avert ruin from that quarter as to create a real government, clear up the relationships of the States to one another, and steady their political action. It absolutely forbade the States to issue bills of credit, did not give the federal government itself power to do so, and was meant practically to prohibit the use of any currency which was not at least based directly upon gold and silver. But the courts had opened new flood-gates. They had ruled that, although the States themselves could not legally issue bills of credit, they could incorporate private banks authorized to issue notes at pleasure, with or without proper security for their redemption,-could even themselves invest public moneys in the stock of such banks and become virtual partners in the irresponsible business. Gold and silver were hard to get, came within reach of eager borrowers only in the most niggardly quantities, and could be had only for securities in hand. The adventures of growth and industry in a new country where everything was making and to be made demanded easy credit, to be had for the asking, and abundant money; and had only promises and hopes to offer for security. Banks of issue sprang up everywhere that there was expectation and sanguine confidence; and every possible vagary attended their operations. No man could tell a day's journey from the bank whose paper he carried whether it would be accepted and serve him as money or not.

Only a great commanding bank, everywhere known, whose notes really and always represented gold could supply paper worth its face value in all places or keep exchanges from chaos.

Such an agency of adjustment and control the Bank of the United States had proved itself to be. It had not only served its purpose as a fiscal agent of the government to the satisfaction of the Treasury, but had also steadied and facilitated every legitimate business transaction and rid the money market of its worst dangers. But many of the men to whom General Jackson was accustomed to listen believed, or affected to believe, that it had done much more: that its power was used to serve a party and to keep men who were no friends of the people or of popular rights in a position to manage and corrupt the whole politics of the nation. They reasoned out of experience. The state banks were everywhere notoriously tainted with political partisanship, were almost everywhere familiar, recognized engines of party supremacy. No one who was not of the political majority in the State could get a banking charter from a state legislature; no one was absolutely sure of credit or indulgence at a state bank except those who were of the party of its directors. It had come to be looked upon as a matter of course that banks should be used as parts of the machinery of political control. General Jackson and his partisans could not believe that the great Bank of the United States was free from a similar taint. It had certainly been established by men of the party which they were now trying in all things to supplant, the men who had turned away from General Jackson and followed Mr. Clay. It was part of the old, suspected, aristocratic order which the new democ

racy had come in to set aside, and everything that it did was subjected to suspicion.

The Bank had branches throughout the country, at points of convenience where business centred. Friends of General Jackson complained that men openly opposed to them in every party interest were appointed officers of these branches, even in States which had cast their votes for General Jackson and the new régime; that loans were refused and collections insisted on in a way which was offensive to the partisans of the Administration; and that money was used in the elections against them. They were particularly indignant that Mr. Jeremiah Mason, an incorrigible Federalist, had been made president of the branch bank at Portsmouth, in New Hampshire, and had shown himself disinclined, as they had expected, to afford friends of General Jackson any unusual indulgence or accommodation in matters of business. Concrete cases fixed General Jackson's convictions in such matters as no argument upon the merits could fix them. Here was a very tangible example of what he had been led to suspect. The story came straight from friends whom he trusted,from Mr. Levi Woodbury and Mr. Isaac Hill, the two men who had been chiefly instrumental, he had reason to believe, in winning New Hampshire over from the Federalist to the Jackson interest. Mr. Hill was editor of the New Hampshire Patriot, and had an editor's inside view of the politics he had had so large a share in shaping. He was also one of the officers of a bank at Concord which was operated under a charter from the State, and had a state banker's knowledge of what the branches of the Bank of the United States could do to dominate credit and control exchanges. Mr. Wood

bury had been chosen a senator of the United States in 1825, and had from the first been received into the intimate counsels of the new President. Mr. Hill had left his bank and his paper in New Hampshire to put himself at the service of the Administration in Washington, and had become, as everybody knew, a member of the "Kitchen Cabinet." When such men told him of the influence of the Bank in New Hampshire, the President could but believe them. Mr. Kendall brought him the same report of its influence in Kentucky. It had undoubtedly, he said, spent money there to secure the success of Mr. Clay and the defeat of General Jackson.

It seemed a significant thing that Jeremiah Mason should have been chosen for president of the branch bank at Portsmouth. He was unquestionably the political opponent whom the Jackson leaders in New Hampshire most feared, and had most reason to fear. His character gave him a very noble eminence; his extraordinary abilities as a debater and his exact knowledge as a lawyer gave him an instant hold upon every thoughtful audience. All the country knew how formidable Mr. Webster was in debate, and Mr. Webster ascribed no small part of his own power to the lessons he had learned when pitted against Mr. Mason at the bar.

The President had no mind to let the case go unnoticed. Mr. Ingham, the Secretary of the Treasury, brought it to the attention of Mr. Biddle, the President of the Bank of the United States (1829), in a letter in which he frankly took it for granted that Mr. Mason had been appointed because of his hostility to General Jackson; plainly intimated that the whole object of the Bank's establishment and management had been