favor of an
institution which has millions to lavish and avows its determination not
to spare its means when they are necessary to accomplish its purposes?
The refusal to render an account of the manner in which a part of the
money expended has been applied gives just cause for the suspicion that
it has been used for purposes which it is not deemed prudent to expose
to the eyes of an intelligent and virtuous people. Those who act justly
do not shun the light, nor do they refuse explanations when the
propriety of their conduct is brought into question.

With these facts before him in an official report from the Government
directors, the President would feel that he was not only responsible for
all the abuses and corruptions the bank has committed or may commit, but
almost an accomplice in a conspiracy against that Government which he
has sworn honestly to administer, if he did not take every step within
his constitutional and legal power likely to be efficient in putting an
end to these enormities. If it be possible within the scope of human
affairs to find a reason for removing the Government deposits and
leaving the bank to its own resource for the means of effecting its
criminal designs, we have it here. Was it expected when the moneys of
the United States were directed to be placed in that bank that they
would be put under the control of one man empowered to spend millions
without rendering a voucher or specifying the object? Can they be
considered safe with the evidence before us that tens of thousands have
been spent for highly improper, if not corrupt, purposes, and that the
same motive may lead to the expenditure of hundreds of thousands, and
even millions, more? And can we justify ourselves to the people by
longer lending to it the money and power of the Government to be
employed for such purposes?

It has been alleged by some as an objection to the removal of the
deposits that the bank has the power, and in that event will have the
disposition, to destroy the State banks employed by the Government,
and bring distress upon the country. It has been the fortune of the
President to encounter dangers which were represented as equally
alarming, and he has seen them vanish before resolution and energy.
Pictures equally appalling were paraded before him when this bank came
to demand a new charter. But what was the result? Has the country been
ruined, or even distressed? Was it ever more prosperous than since that
ac