The rival powers of the state had down to that period consisted of the crown and the landed aristocracy. The measures out of which the money power was constructed were designed, as has been stated, to render the former, restored to greater favor with the nation by the Revolution, more independent of the latter than it had hitherto been. This new power had not only performed its duty in that regard, acting in the capacity of umpire between the crown and the landed aristocracy, (the latter before so omnipotent,) but had at times found itself able to control the action of both through the influence of public opinion, to which it had given a vitality and force it never before possessed. Mr. Bancroft, in his able history of the United States, has given a condensed and I have no doubt a very correct account of the rise and of a part of the progress of the money power in England, as they are presented by her historians. His entire remarks upon the subject are full of interest and instruction, and I regret that I am obliged to restrict myself to the following extract:--"Moreover, as the expenses of wars soon exceeded the revenue of England, the government prepared to avail itself of the largest credit which, not the accumulations of wealth only, but the floating credits of commerce, and the funding system could supply. The price of such aid was political influence. That the government should, as its paramount policy, promote commerce, domestic manufactures, and a favorable balance of trade; that the classes benefited by this policy should sustain the government with their credit and their wealth, was the reciprocal relation and compromise on which rested the fate of parties in England. The floating credits of commerce, aided by commercial accumulations, soon grew powerful enough to balance the landed interest; stock aristocracy competed with feudalism. So imposing was the spectacle of the introduction of the citizens and of commerce as the arbiter of alliances, the umpire of factions, the judge of war and peace, that it roused the attention of speculative men: that at last Bolingbroke, claiming to speak for the landed aristocracy, described his opponents, the Whigs, as the party of the banks, the commercial corporations, and 'in general, the moneyed interest;' and the gentle Addison, espousing the cause of the burghers, declares nothing to be more reasonable than that 'those who have engrossed the riches of the nation should have the management of its public treasure, and the direction of its fleets and armies.' In a word the old English aristocracy was compelled to respect the innovating element embodied in the moneyed interest."[22] [22] 3 Bancroft's _History of the United States_, p. 8.