ding the means of extravagance afforded by the public funds and
restraining them from excessive issues of notes which they would be
constantly called upon to redeem.

I am aware it has been urged that this control may be best attained and
exerted by means of a national bank. The constitutional objections
which I am well known to entertain would prevent me in any event from
proposing or assenting to that remedy; but in addition to this, I can
not after past experience bring myself to think that it can any longer
be extensively regarded as effective for such a purpose. The history of
the late national bank, through all its mutations, shows that it was
not so. On the contrary, it may, after a careful consideration of the
subject, be, I think, safely stated that at every period of banking
excess it took the lead; that in 1817 and 1818, in 1823, in 1831, and
in 1834 its vast expansions, followed by distressing contractions, led
to those of the State institutions. It swelled and maddened the tides of
the banking system, but seldom allayed or safely directed them. At a few
periods only was a salutary control exercised, but an eager desire, on
the contrary, exhibited for profit in the first place; and if afterwards
its measures were severe toward other institutions, it was because its
own safety compelled it to adopt them. It did not differ from them in
principle or in form; its measures emanated from the same spirit of
gain; it felt the same temptation to overissues; it suffered from and
was totally unable to avert those inevitable laws of trade by which it
was itself affected equally with them; and at least on one occasion, at
an early day, it was saved only by extraordinary exertions from the same
fate that attended the weakest institution it professed to supervise.
In 1837 it failed equally with others in redeeming its notes (though
the two years allowed by its charter for that purpose had not expired),
a large amount of which remains to the present time outstanding. It is
true that, having so vast a capital and strengthened by the use of all
the revenues of the Government, it possessed more power; but while it
was itself by that circumstance freed from the control which all banks
require, its paramount object and inducement were left the same--to
make the most for its stockholders, not to regulate the currency of the
country. Nor has it, as far as we are advised, been found to be greatly
otherwise elsewhere. The national ch