e they increase the profits
of those who are allowed to use the public funds, and make it their
interest that money should be accumulated and expenditures multiplied.
It is thus that a concentrated money power is tempted to become an
active agent in political affairs; and all past experience has shown
on which side that influence will be arrayed. We deceive ourselves if
we suppose that it will ever be found asserting and supporting the
rights of the community at large in opposition to the claims of the few.

In a government whose distinguishing characteristic should be a
diffusion and equalization of its benefits and burdens the advantage of
individuals will be augmented at the expense of the community at large.
Nor is it the nature of combinations for the acquisition of legislative
influence to confine their interference to the single object for which
they were originally formed. The temptation to extend it to other
matters is, on the contrary, not unfrequently too strong to be resisted.
The rightful influence in the direction of public affairs of the mass
of the people is therefore in no slight danger of being sensibly and
injuriously affected by giving to a comparatively small but very
efficient class a direct and exclusive personal interest in so important
a portion of the legislation of Congress as that which relates to the
custody of the public moneys. If laws acting upon private interests can
not always be avoided, they should be confined within the narrowest
limits, and left wherever possible to the legislatures of the States.
When not thus restricted they lead to combinations of powerful
associations, foster an influence necessarily selfish, and turn the
fair course of legislation to sinister ends rather than to objects
that advance public liberty and promote the general good.

The whole subject now rests with you, and I can not but express a hope
that some definite measure will be adopted at the present session.

It will not, I am sure, be deemed out of place for me here to remark
that the declaration of my views in opposition to the policy of
employing banks as depositories of the Government funds can not justly
be construed as indicative of hostility, official or personal, to those
institutions; or to repeat in this form and in connection with this
subject opinions which I have uniformly entertained and on all proper
occasions expressed. Though always opposed to their creation in the
form of exclusive priv