d present condition of the Bank of the United
States.

By documents submitted to Congress at the present session it appears
that on the 1st of January, 1832, of the twenty-eight millions of
private stock in the corporation, $8,405,500 were held by foreigners,
mostly of Great Britain. The amount of stock held in the nine Western
and Southwestern States is $140,200, and in the four Southern States is
$5,623,100, and in the Middle and Eastern States is about $13,522,000.
The profits of the bank in 1831, as shown in a statement to Congress,
were about $3,455,598; of this there accrued in the nine Western States
about $1,640,048; in the four Southern States about $352,507, and in the
Middle and Eastern States about $1,463,041. As little stock is held in
the West, it is obvious that the debt of the people in that section to
the bank is principally a debt to the Eastern and foreign stockholders;
that the interest they pay upon it is carried into the Eastern States
and into Europe, and that it is a burden upon their industry and a drain
of their currency, which no country can bear without inconvenience and
occasional distress. To meet this burden and equalize the exchange
operations of the bank, the amount of specie drawn from those States
through its branches within the last two years, as shown by its official
reports, was about $6,000,000. More than half a million of this amount
does not stop in the Eastern States, but passes on to Europe to pay the
dividends of the foreign stockholders. In the principle of taxation
recognized by this act the Western States find no adequate compensation
for this perpetual burden on their industry and drain of their currency.
The branch bank at Mobile made last year $95,140, yet under the
provisions of this act the State of Alabama can raise no revenue from
these profitable operations, because not a share of the stock is held by
any of her citizens. Mississippi and Missouri are in the same condition
in relation to the branches at Natchez and St. Louis, and such, in a
greater or less degree, is the condition of every Western State. The
tendency of the plan of taxation which this act proposes will be to
place the whole United States in the same relation to foreign countries
which the Western States now bear to the Eastern. When by a tax on
resident stockholders the stock of this bank is made worth 10 or 15 per
cent more to foreigners than to residents, most of it will inevitably
leave the countr