nto consideration, and say whether they are willing
to give to any administration such powerful means of exercising an
influence of the worst sort over the minds of the people--whether they
will take the money now gained or saved to the nation by means of the
Bank of the United States, to enable a president and his cabinet to buy
golden opinions of that numerous class who have them to sell.

The president lays some stress on the circumstance that his proposed
treasury bank would not be a corporation, as is the Bank of the United
States. But the lawyers tell us that there are two kinds of
corporations--aggregate and sole--and the question is, whether influence
is likely to be less extensive, or less dangerous, when it is
transferred from the corporation aggregate, (the bank) to the
corporation sole, (the executive). In the first case, the influence of
the bank has checks from its charter--from its stockholders--from its
directors--from public opinion--and, lastly, from the legislature. In
the last, the influence would be added to that which is already deemed
by many too great for the public tranquillity or safety. Whatever means
the Bank of the United States possesses, of operating "on the hopes,
fears, or interests of large masses of the community," the state banks
possess, to a far greater extent; and it would always be in the power
of the government to act on these corporations, either by the treasury
bank "checking their issues," as the president proposes; or, in case
that monstrous scheme should be rejected, by means of the public
deposits; so that, in any event, if the charter of the present bank is
not renewed, the influence of the executive will receive a most
formidable increase.

Nor could the proposed national bank answer the same useful purposes to
the commercial world, as the present Bank of the United States. And,
first, as to transmitting values from one part of the Union to another,
by means of bills of exchange. The president informs us the new bank
might sell these at a moderate premium. But its means of doing so would
be evidently far more limited than those of the present bank, since the
latter, in addition to all the means possessed by the treasury bank, has
its own large capital and credit. In the year 1829, the amount of drafts
on each other which the bank and its offices sold, was upwards of
twenty-four millions, and the amount of its transfers of public money,
by means of treasury drafts, amount