other banks and fiscal institutions, was truly great and extensive, and a power which was exercised and made to be felt during the struggle to such a degree that it threatened a danger to the country and the government almost amounting to a national calamity. The subject of renewal of the charter was agitated at every succeeding session of Congress down to 1836, and many able speeches made for and against it. In the month of December, 1831, the National Republicans, as the party was then called which afterward took the name of “whig,” held its convention in Baltimore, and nominated candidates for President and Vice-President, to be voted for at the election in the autumn of the ensuing year. Henry Clay was the candidate for the office of President, and John Sergeant for that of Vice-President. The platform or address to the people presented the party issues which were to be settled at the ensuing election, the chief subjects being the tariff, internal improvement, removal of the Cherokee Indians, and the renewal of the United States Bank charter. Thus the bank question was fully presented as an issue in the election by that part of its friends who classed politically against President Jackson. But it had also Democratic friends without whose aid the re-charter could not be got through Congress, and they labored assiduously for it. The first Bank of the United States, chartered in 1791, was a federal measure, favored by General Hamilton, opposed by Mr. Jefferson, Mr. Madison, and the Republican party; and became a great landmark of party, not merely for the bank itself, but for the latitudinarian construction of the constitution in which it was founded, and the precedent it established that Congress might in its discretion do what it pleased, under the plea of being “_necessary_” to carry into effect some granted power. The non-renewal of the charter in 1811, was the act of the Republican party, then in possession of the government, and taking the opportunity to terminate, upon its own limitation, the existence of an institution whose creation they had not been able to prevent. The charter of the second bank, in 1816, was the act of the Republican party, and to aid them in the administration of the government, and, as such, was opposed by the Federal party—not seeming then to understand that, by its instincts, a great moneyed corporation was in sympathy with their own party, and would soon be with it in action—which the bank soon was—and now struggled for a continuation of its existence under the lead of those who had opposed its creation and against the party which effected it. Mr. Webster was a Federal leader on both occasions—against the charter in 1816; for the re-charter in 1832. The bill passed the Senate after a long and arduous contest; and afterwards passed the House, quickly and with little or no contest at all.