y.

Thus will this provision in its practical effect deprive the Eastern as
well as the Southern and Western States of the means of raising a
revenue from the extension of business and great profits of this
institution. It will make the American people debtors to aliens in
nearly the whole amount due to this bank, and send across the Atlantic
from two to five millions of specie every year to pay the bank
dividends.

In another of its bearings this provision is fraught with danger. Of the
twenty-five directors of this bank five are chosen by the Government and
twenty by the citizen stockholders. From all voice in these elections
the foreign stockholders are excluded by the charter. In proportion,
therefore, as the stock is transferred to foreign holders the extent of
suffrage in the choice of directors is curtailed. Already is almost a
third of the stock in foreign hands and not represented in elections. It
is constantly passing out of the country, and this act will accelerate
its departure. The entire control of the institution would necessarily
fall into the hands of a few citizen stockholders, and the ease with
which the object would be accomplished would be a temptation to
designing men to secure that control in their own hands by monopolizing
the remaining stock. There is danger that a president and directors
would then be able to elect themselves from year to year, and without
responsibility or control manage the whole concerns of the bank during
the existence of its charter. It is easy to conceive that great evils to
our country and its institutions might flow from such a concentration of
power in the hands of a few men irresponsible to the people.

Is there no danger to our liberty and independence in a bank that in its
nature has so little to bind it to our country? The president of the
bank has told us that most of the State banks exist by its forbearance.
Should its influence become concentered, as it may under the operation
of such an act as this, in the hands of a self-elected directory whose
interests are identified with those of the foreign stockholders, will
there not be cause to tremble for the purity of our elections in peace
and for the independence of our country in war? Their power would be
great whenever they might choose to exert it; but if this monopoly were
regularly renewed every fifteen or twenty years on terms proposed by
themselves, they might seldom in peace put forth their strength to
in