uties to the stockholders of
the bank, which required them to disregard political considerations in
their appointments. This correspondence ran along into the fall of the
year, and finally terminated in a stern and unanimous declaration, made
by the directors, and transmitted to the Secretary of the Treasury, that
the bank would continue to be independently administered, and that the
directors once for all refused to submit to the supervision of the
executive authority, in any of its branches, in the appointment of local
directors and agents. This resolution decided the character of the
future. Hostility towards the bank, thenceforward, became the settled
policy of the government; and the message of December, 1829, was the
clear announcement of that policy. If the bank had appointed those
directors, thus recommended by members of Congress; if it had submitted
all its appointments to the supervision of the treasury; if it had
removed the president of the New Hampshire branch; if it had, in all
things, showed itself a complying, political, party machine, instead of
an independent institution;--if it had done this, I leave all men to
judge whether such an entire change of opinion, as to its
constitutionality, its utility, and its good effects on the currency,
would have happened between March and December.

From the moment in which the bank asserted its independence of treasury
control, and its elevation above mere party purposes, down to the end of
its charter, and down even to the present day, it has been the subject
to which the selectest phrases of party denunciation have been
plentifully applied.

But Congress manifested no disposition to establish a treasury bank. On
the contrary, it was satisfied, and so was the country, most
unquestionably, with the bank then existing. In the summer of 1832,
Congress passed an act for continuing the charter of the bank, by strong
majorities in both houses. In the House of Representatives, I think, two
thirds of the members voted for the bill. The President gave it his
negative; and as there were not two thirds of the Senate, though a large
majority were for it, the bill failed to become a law.

But it was not enough that a continuance of the charter of the bank was
thus refused. It had the deposit of the public money, and this it was
entitled to, by law, for the few years which yet remained of its
chartered term. But this it was determined it should not continue to
enjoy. At the