n popular
governments and to bring into contempt their authority and efficiency.
In guarding against an evil of such magnitude considerations of
temporary convenience should be thrown out of the question, and we
should be influenced by such motives only as look to the honor and
preservation of the republican system. Deeply and solemnly impressed
with the justice of these views, I feel it to be my duty to recommend to
you that a law be passed authorizing the sale of the public stock: that
the provision of the charter requiring the receipt of notes of the bank
in payment of public dues shall, in accordance with the power reserved
to Congress in the fourteenth section of the charter, be suspended until
the bank pays to the Treasury the dividends withheld, and that all laws
connecting the Government or its officers with the bank, directly or
indirectly, be repealed, and that the institution be left hereafter
to its own resources and means.

Events have satisfied my mind, and I think the minds of the American
people, that the mischiefs and dangers which flow from a national bank
far overbalance all its advantages. The bold effort the present bank has
made to control the Government, the distresses it has wantonly produced,
the violence of which it has been the occasion in one of our cities
famed for its observance of law and order, are but premonitions of the
fate which awaits the American people should they be deluded into a
perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like
it. It is fervently hoped that thus admonished those who have heretofore
favored the establishment of a substitute for the present bank will
be induced to abandon it, as it is evidently better to incur any
inconvenience that may be reasonably expected than to concentrate the
whole moneyed power of the Republic in any form whatsoever or under
any restrictions.

Happily it is already illustrated that the agency of such an institution
is not necessary to the fiscal operations of the Government. The State
banks are found fully adequate to the performance of all services which
were required of the Bank of the United States, quite as promptly and
with the same cheapness. They have maintained themselves and discharged
all these duties while the Bank of the United States was still powerful
and in the field as an open enemy, and it is not possible to conceive
that they will find greater difficulties in their operations when that
enemy shall c