nfluence, and no accumulation of
irresponsible power in a few hands. I cannot but hope, therefore, that
the people of the United States will not now yield up their judgment to
those notions which would reverse all our best experience, and persuade
us to discontinue a useful institution from the influence of vague and
unfounded declamation against its danger to the public liberties. Our
liberties, indeed, must stand upon very frail foundations, if the
government cannot, without endangering them, avail itself of those
common facilities, in the collection of its revenues and the management
of its finances, which all other governments, in commercial countries,
find useful and necessary.

In order to justify its alarm for the security of our independence, the
message supposes a case. It supposes that the bank should pass
principally into the hands of the subjects of a foreign country, and
that we should be involved in war with that country, and then it
exclaims, "What would be our condition?" Why, Sir, it is plain that all
the advantages would be on our side. The bank would still be our
institution, subject to our own laws, and all its directors elected by
ourselves; and our means would be enhanced, not by the confiscation and
plunder, but by the proper use, of the foreign capital in our hands.
And, Sir, it is singular enough that this very state of war, from which
this argument against a bank is drawn, is the very thing which, more
than all others, convinced the country and the government of the
necessity of a national bank. So much was the want of such an
institution felt in the late war, that the subject engaged the attention
of Congress, constantly, from the declaration of that war down to the
time when the existing bank was actually established; so that in this
respect, as well as in others, the argument of the message is directly
opposed to the whole experience of the government, and to the general
and long-settled convictions of the country.

I now proceed, Sir, to a few remarks upon the President's constitutional
objections to the bank; and I cannot forbear to say, in regard to them,
that he appears to me to have assumed very extraordinary grounds of
reasoning. He denies that the constitutionality of the bank is a settled
question. If it be not, will it ever become so, or what disputed
question ever can be settled? I have already observed, that for
thirty-six years out of the forty-three during which the government