The “bank conspirators,” as they were called, had been at work incessantly, and they had a few--a very few--helpers in that country, who had been furnished with and had repeated (with great regret?) this charge of imbecility of old age, which rendered it dangerous to the liberties of the people and perilous to the government to re-elect the once great man, then a mental wreck. It may, even at this late day, be of benefit to reproduce in part an editorial from one of the newspapers of the period--a strong and powerful one--which, it was said, had been hired to desert and slander President Jackson, and to wait until he was in the midst of his journey through the country to the Hermitage, before it made its first assault on him. This editorial, among other things, said: Since 1823 I have been the firm, undeviating friend of Andrew Jackson, through good and through evil report. I have defended his reputation and advocated his cause; and, for the last five years, my exertions in his behalf, as the conductor of a public journal, have been known to this country. But the time has now arrived when I owe it to the people, to the institutions of the country and to myself to declare my deliberate conviction that he has not realized the high hopes which his reputation and previously written and declared opinions promised, nor redeemed the sacred pledges which he voluntarily gave on his election to the first station in the world. Let us not be misunderstood: I do not--I never will--impeach his patriotism or his integrity; but as a sentinel at my post, true to the duty which I voluntarily assumed when I became the editor of a public journal, I feel called upon to proclaim to the people that Andrew Jackson is not their President; that, enfeebled by age and the toils, cares and anxieties of an active and laborious life, he no longer possesses his former energy of character or independence of mind, but, confiding in those who have wormed themselves into his confidence, he has entrusted the affairs of this great nation and the happiness of thirteen millions of freemen to the hands of political gamblers and money-changers, time-serving politicians, who, in the pursuit of their unhallowed purposes, threaten ruin to the country and to that sacred charter of our liberties which was maintained by the wisdom of our fathers, after having been purchased with their blood and the sacrifice of every selfish motive on the altar of public good.[T]