ering of the bank, who could have been induced to change his
vote by corrupt means, had the president and directors of the bank been
base enough to attempt the use of them. "That the imputation is cruelly
ungenerous towards the friends of the administration in this house,
is," said Mr. Adams, "my deliberate opinion; and now, when we reflect
that this defamatory and disgraceful suspicion, harbored or professed
against his own friends, supporters, and adherents, was the real and
efficient _cause_ (to call it reason would be to _shame_ the term),
that it was the real _motive_ for the removal of the deposits during
the recess of Congress, and only two months before its meeting, what
can we do but hide our heads with _shame_? Sir, one of the duties of
the President of the United States--a duty as sacred as that to which
he is bound by his official oath--is that of maintaining unsullied
the honor of his country. But how could the President of the United
States assert, in the presence of any foreigner, a claim to honorable
principle or moral virtue, as attributes belonging to his countrymen,
when he is the first to cast the indelible stigma upon them? '_Vale,
venalis civitas, mox peritura, si emptorem invenias_,' was the
prophetic curse of Jugurtha upon Rome, in the days of her deep
corruption. If the imputations of the President of the United States
upon his own partisans and supporters were true, our country would
already have found a purchaser."

"That this was the true and efficient _cause_," Mr. Adams proceeds,
"of that removal, is evident, not only by the positive testimony of Mr.
Duane, but from the utter futility of the reasons assigned by Mr. Taney.
Mr. Duane states that, on the second day after he entered upon his
duties as Secretary of the Treasury, the President himself declared to
him his determination to cause the public deposits to be removed before
the meeting of Congress. He said that the matter under consideration was
of vast consequence to the country; that, unless the bank was broken
down, it would break us down; that, if the last Congress had remained a
week longer in session, two thirds would have been secured for the bank
by corrupt means; and that the like result might be apprehended the next
Congress; that such a state bank agency must be put in operation, before
the meeting of Congress, as would show that the United States Bank was
not necessary, and thus some members would have no excuse for voting fo