With these observations I recommend the whole matter to your
dispassionate reflection, confidently hoping that some conclusion may
be reached by your deliberations which on the one hand shall give
safety and stability to the fiscal operations of the Government, and
be consistent, on the other, with the genius of our institutions and
with the interests and wishes of the great mass of our constituents.

It was my hope that nothing would occur to make necessary on
this occasion any allusion to the late national bank. There are
circumstances, however, connected with the present state of its affairs
that bear so directly on the character of the Government and the welfare
of the citizen that I should not feel myself excused in neglecting to
notice them. The charter which terminated its banking privileges on the
4th of March, 1836, continued its corporate power two years more for
the sole purpose of closing its affairs, with authority "to use the
corporate name, style, and capacity for the purpose of suits for a final
settlement and liquidation of the affairs and acts of the corporation,
and for the sale and disposition of their estate--real, personal, and
mixed--but for no other purpose or in any other manner whatsoever." Just
before the banking privileges ceased, its effects were transferred by
the bank to a new State institution, then recently incorporated, in
trust, for the discharge of its debts and the settlement of its affairs.
With this trustee, by authority of Congress, an adjustment was
subsequently made of the large interest which the Government had in the
stock of the institution. The manner in which a trust unexpectedly
created upon the act granting the charter, and involving such great
public interests, has been executed would under any circumstances be a
fit subject of inquiry; but much more does it deserve your attention
when it embraces the redemption of obligations to which the authority
and credit of the United States have given value. The two years allowed
are now nearly at an end. It is well understood that the trustee has
not redeemed and canceled the outstanding notes of the bank, but has
reissued and is actually reissuing, since the 3d of March, 1836, the
notes which have been received by it to a vast amount. According to its
own official statement, so late as the 1st of October last, nineteen
months after the banking privileges given by the charter had expired, it
had under its control uncanceled no