States.
Public opinion would cry out against its illiberal course, and would
fully avenge the wrong. Some of their best customers would desert them.
They would lose most of their deposits. Their notes would be
industriously collected and prematurely returned to them, and they would
thus not only lessen their present profits, but furnish their enemies
with arguments against the renewal of their charter. The supposition of
such a course presumes the bank to be utterly regardless of
their own interests, as well as of all sense of fairness and
liberality--considerations which still have some weight with some
men--and it is at variance with all that we have ever heard of the
officers of that institution. As a proof that no fears or jealousies
against the Bank of the United States are entertained by safe and
substantial banks, we may remind our readers, that Mr. Girard, the
greatest banker we have, was one of the most efficient supporters of the
present national bank. No other individual in the United States would be
so much affected as he, if its competition and neighbourhood were
pernicious, and yet no one subscribed so largely to its stock, and no
one, we have reason to believe, deplores more strongly the confusion in
the moneyed concerns of the country, which he thinks would be inevitable
on the destruction of the bank.

It is probable enough, that although these alleged causes of jealousy
and alarm are known to be groundless by the state banks, the proposition
against re-chartering the bank addresses itself to those institutions in
another way. They have been led to believe that the benefits of the
business now done by the bank, and of the government deposits, would be
apportioned among them. But let them not flatter themselves with
profiting by a division of this spoil. That great void in the
circulation which the withdrawal of the capital of the bank would
occasion, would immediately and imperatively call for new banks, which
the states would be sure to establish; and when once they began to meet
the demand, it would not be strange if the supply sometimes exceeded it,
according to the common occurrence of a scarcity being followed by a
glut. In that event, the present state banks might find too late that
they had exchanged one old and liberal rival for two or more new ones,
of a different character, who would be their competitors not only for
the profits of banking, but also for the favour or forbearance of the
state