ses, who were the exclusive objects of the care of the Government.

It was not possible to reconstruct society in the United States upon the
European plan. Here there was a written Constitution, by which orders
and titles were not recognized or tolerated. A system of measures was
therefore devised, calculated, if not intended, to withdraw power
gradually and silently from the States and the mass of the people, and
by _construction_ to approximate our Government to the European models,
substituting an aristocracy of wealth for that of orders and titles.

Without reflecting upon the dissimilarity of our institutions and of the
condition of our people and those of Europe, they conceived the vain
idea of building up in the United States a system similar to that which
they admired abroad. Great Britain had a national bank of large capital,
in whose hands was concentrated the controlling monetary and financial
power of the nation--an institution wielding almost kingly power, and
exerting vast influence upon all the operations of trade and upon the
policy of the Government itself. Great Britain had an enormous public
debt, and it had become a part of her public policy to regard this
as a "public blessing." Great Britain had also a restrictive policy,
which placed fetters and burdens on trade and trammeled the productive
industry of the mass of the nation. By her combined system of policy the
landlords and other property holders were protected and enriched by the
enormous taxes which were levied upon the labor of the country for their
advantage. Imitating this foreign policy, the first step in establishing
the new system in the United States was the creation of a national bank.
Not foreseeing the dangerous power and countless evils which such an
institution might entail on the country, nor perceiving the connection
which it was designed to form between the bank and the other branches of
the miscalled "American system," but feeling the embarrassments of the
Treasury and of the business of the country consequent upon the war,
some of our statesmen who had held different and sounder views were
induced to yield their scruples and, indeed, settled convictions of its
unconstitutionality, and to give it their sanction as an expedient which
they vainly hoped might produce relief. It was a most unfortunate error,
as the subsequent history and final catastrophe of that dangerous and
corrupt institution have abundantly proved. The bank, wi