would it not have been in a season
of war, with an enemy at your doors? No nation but the freemen of the
United States could have come out victorious from such a contest; yet,
if you had not conquered, the Government would have passed from the
hands of the many to the hands of the few, and this organized money
power from its secret conclave would have dictated the choice of your
highest officers and compelled you to make peace or war, as best suited
their own wishes. The forms of your Government might for a time have
remained, but its living spirit would have departed from it.

The distress and sufferings inflicted on the people by the bank are some
of the fruits of that system of policy which is continually striving to
enlarge the authority of the Federal Government beyond the limits fixed
by the Constitution. The powers enumerated in that instrument do not
confer on Congress the right to establish such a corporation as the Bank
of the United States, and the evil consequences which followed may warn
us of the danger of departing from the true rule of construction and of
permitting temporary circumstances or the hope of better promoting the
public welfare to influence in any degree our decisions upon the extent
of the authority of the General Government. Let us abide by the
Constitution as it is written, or amend it in the constitutional mode
if it is found to be defective.

The severe lessons of experience will, I doubt not, be sufficient to
prevent Congress from again chartering such a monopoly, even if the
Constitution did not present an insuperable objection to it. But you
must remember, my fellow-citizens, that eternal vigilance by the people
is the price of liberty, and that you must pay the price if you wish to
secure the blessing. It behooves you, therefore, to be watchful in your
States as well as in the Federal Government. The power which the moneyed
interest can exercise, when concentrated under a single head and with
our present system of currency, was sufficiently demonstrated in the
struggle made by the Bank of the United States. Defeated in the General
Government, the same class of intriguers and politicians will now resort
to the States and endeavor to obtain there the same organization which
they failed to perpetuate in the Union; and with specious and deceitful
plans of public advantages and State interests and State pride they will
endeavor to establish in the different States one moneyed institution