ished
for its suppressed passion and its stern severity. He had waked up, at
last, to the scandalous barter in bank charters.

There was, however, one Republican in Albany whose course excited more
serious censure than was meted out to all others. At a moment when the
methods of bank managers aroused the most bitter hostility of his
closest political allies, DeWitt Clinton became conspicuous by his
silence. At heart he opposed the Bank of America as bitterly as
Ambrose Spencer and for the same reasons; nor did he recognise any
difference in the conditions surrounding it and those which existed in
1805 when he drove Ebenezer Purdy from the Senate; but, consumed with
a desire to get a legislative indorsement for President, before
Madison secured a congressional nomination, he refused to take sides,
since the bank people, who dominated the Legislature, refused such an
indorsement until the passage of their charter. In vain did Spencer
threaten and Taylor plead. He would vote, Clinton said, against the
bank if opportunity presented, but he would not be drawn into the
bitter contest; he would not denounce Southwick; he would not judge
Thomas; he would not even venture to criticise the bank. For fourteen
years Clinton and Spencer had been fast political friends; but now,
at the supreme moment of Clinton's ambition, these brothers-in-law
were to fall under the guidance of different stars.

Governor Tompkins, whose desire to enter the White House no longer
veiled itself as a secret, understood the purpose and importance of
Clinton's silence, and to give President Madison an advantage, he used
a prerogative, only once exercised under the Constitution of 1777, to
prorogue the Legislature for sixty days. Ostensibly he did it to
defeat the bank; in reality he desired the defeat of Clinton. It is
not easy to appreciate the wild excitement that followed the
Governor's act. It recalled the days of the provincial governors, when
England's hand rested heavily upon the liberties of the people; and
the friends of the bank joined in bitter denunciation of such a
despotic use of power. Meantime, a congressional caucus renominated
Madison. But whatever the forced adjournment did for Clinton, it in no
wise injured the bank, which was chartered as soon as the Legislature
reassembled on May 21.

While the Bank of America was engrossing the attention of the
Legislature and the nomination of a presidential candidate convulsed
Congress, George