Gallatin had at last found a capable senator to support him. The political fortunes of William Henry Crawford, which ended only at the threshold of the White House, drew no small part of their growth from his courageous defence of the Treasury during these chaotic years. Crawford showed the faults of a strong nature,--he was overbearing, high-tempered, and his ambition did not spurn what his enemies called intrigue; but he possessed the courage of Henry Clay, with more than Clay’s intelligence, though far less than his charm. Crawford was never weak, rarely oratorical; and if he was ever emotional he reserved his emotion for other places than the Senate. “One man at last appeared who filled my expectations,” wrote Gallatin many years afterward to an old and intimate friend.[270] “This was Mr. Crawford, who united to a powerful mind a most correct judgment and an inflexible integrity,--which last quality, not sufficiently tempered by indulgence and civility, has prevented his acquiring general popularity.” February 5 he introduced into the Senate a bill continuing the old Bank charter for twenty years on certain conditions; and February 11 he supported the bill in a speech remarkable for the severity of its truths. He began by challenging the Constitution itself:-- “Upon the most thorough examination [of the Constitution] I am induced to believe that many of the various constructions given to it are the result of a belief that it is absolutely perfect. It has become so extremely fashionable to eulogize this Constitution, whether the object of the eulogist is the extension or contraction of the powers of the government, that whenever its eulogium is pronounced I feel an involuntary apprehension of mischief.” Upon the party theory that Congress could exercise no implied power, and therefore could not charter a corporation, Crawford fell energetically, until he came in contact with the instructions of State legislatures, which he swept out of his path with actual contempt:-- “What is the inducement with these great States to put down the Bank of the United States? Their avarice combined with their love of domination!... The great commercial States are to monopolize the benefits which are to arise from the deposits of your public money. The suppression of this Bank will benefit none of the interior or smaller States in which there is little or no revenue collected. As the whole benefit is to be engrossed by three or four of the great Atlantic States, so the whole of the power which the dissolution of this Bank will take from the national government will be exclusively monopolized by the same States.”