an appeal
to the judiciary to sanction it. That the money had not technically
been paid into the Treasury does not affect the principle intended to
be established by the Constitution. The Executive and the judiciary
have as little right to appropriate and expend the public money without
authority of law before it is placed to the credit of the Treasury as to
take it from the Treasury. In the annual report of the Secretary of the
Treasury, and in his correspondence with the president of the bank, and
the opinions of the Attorney-General accompanying it, you will find a
further examination of the claims of the bank and the course it has
pursued.

It seems due to the safety of the public funds remaining in that bank
and to the honor of the American people that measures be taken to
separate the Government entirely from an institution so mischievous to
the public prosperity and so regardless of the Constitution and laws. By
transferring the public deposits, by appointing other pension agents as
far as it had the power, by ordering the discontinuance of the receipt
of bank checks in the payment of the public dues after the 1st day of
January, the Executive has exerted all its lawful authority to sever the
connection between the Government and this faithless corporation.

The high-handed career of this institution imposes upon the
constitutional functionaries of this Government duties of the gravest
and most imperative character--duties which they can not avoid and from
which I trust there will be no inclination on the part of any of them
to shrink. My own sense of them is most clear, as is also my readiness
to discharge those which may rightfully fall on me. To continue any
business relations with the Bank of the United States that may be
avoided without a violation of the national faith after that institution
has set at open defiance the conceded right of the Government to examine
its affairs, after it has done all in its power to deride the public
authority in other respects and to bring it into disrepute at home and
abroad, after it has attempted to defeat the clearly expressed will of
the people by turning against them the immense power intrusted to its
hands and by involving a country otherwise peaceful, flourishing, and
happy, in dissension, embarrassment, and distress, would make the nation
itself a party to the degradation so sedulously prepared for its public
agents and do much to destroy the confidence of mankind i