The chief measure of the session, and the great object of the whig party—the one for which it had labored for ten years—was for the re-charter of a national bank. Without this all other measures would be deemed to be incomplete, and the victorious election itself but little better than a defeat. The President, while a member of the Democratic party, had been opposed to the United States Bank; and to overcome any objections he might have the bill was carefully prepared, and studiously contrived to avoid the President’s objections, and save his consistency—a point upon which he was exceedingly sensitive. The democratic members resisted strenuously, in order to make the measure odious, but successful resistance was impossible. It passed both houses by a close vote; and contrary to all expectation the President disapproved the act, but with such expressions of readiness to approve another bill which should be free from the objections which he named, as still to keep his party together, and to prevent the resignation of his cabinet. In his veto message the President fell back upon his early opinions against the constitutionality of a national bank, so often and so publicly expressed. The veto caused consternation among the whig members; and Mr. Clay openly gave expression to his dissatisfaction, in the debate on the veto message, in terms to assert that President Tyler had violated his faith to the whig party, and had been led off from them by new associations. He said: “And why should not President Tyler have suffered the bill to become a law without his signature? Without meaning the slightest possible disrespect to him (nothing is further from my heart than the exhibition of any such feeling towards that distinguished citizen, long my personal friend), it cannot be forgotten that he came into his present office under peculiar circumstances. The people did not foresee the contingency which has happened. They voted for him as Vice-President. They did not, therefore, scrutinize his opinions with the care which they probably ought to have done, and would have done, if they could have looked into futurity. If the present state of the fact could have been anticipated—if at Harrisburg, or at the polls, it had been foreseen that General Harrison would die in one short month after the commencement of his administration; so that Vice-President Tyler would be elevated to the presidential chair; that a bill passed by decisive majorities of the first whig Congress, chartering a national bank, would be presented for his sanction; and that he would veto the bill, do I hazard anything when I express the conviction that he would not have received a solitary vote in the nominating convention, nor one solitary electoral vote in any State in the Union?”