from office. In attacking the Bank he laid a profane touch upon
a sacred ark and handled untempered mortar. He stopped the balance-wheel
which regulated the finances of the country, and introduced no end of
commercial disorders, ending in dire disasters. Like the tariff,
finances were a question with which he was not competent to deal. His
fault was something more than the veto on the recharter of the Bank by
Congress, which he had a constitutional right to make; it was a
vindictive assault on an important institution before its charter had
expired, even in his first message to Congress. In this warfare we see
unscrupulous violence,--prompted, not alone by his firm hostility to
everything which looked like a monopoly and a moneyed power, but by the
influence of advisers who hated everything like inequality of position,
especially when not usable for their own purposes. They stimulated his
jealousy and resentments. They played on his passions and prejudices.
They flattered him as if he were the monarch of the universe, incapable
of a wrong judgment.

Hostility to the money-power, however, is older than the public life of
Jackson. It existed among the American democracy as early as the time of
Alexander Hamilton. When he founded the first Bank of the United States
he met with great opposition from the followers of Jefferson, who were
jealous of the power it was supposed to wield in politics. When in 1810
the question came up of renewing the charter of the first United States
Bank, the Democratic-Republicans were bitter in their opposition; and so
effective was the outcry that the bank went into liquidation, its place
being taken by local banks. These issued notes so extravagantly that the
currency of the country, as stated by Professor Sumner, was depreciated
twenty-five per cent. So great was the universal financial distress
which followed the unsound system of banking operations that in 1816 a
new bank was chartered, on the principles which Hamilton had laid down.

This Bank was to run for twenty years, and its capital was thirty-five
millions of dollars, seven of which were taken by the United States;
many of its stockholders were widows, charitable institutions, and
people of small means. Its directors were chosen by the stockholders
with the exception of five appointed by the President of the United
States and confirmed by the Senate. The public money was deposited in
this Bank; it could be removed by the Secretary o