If the supporters of the bank had been willing to judge the President by the claim of power under the Constitution which he intended to advance in his veto message, there would have been a perfect accord of opinion between him and their great leader in the debate upon that document, and one disturbing element would have been withdrawn from the severe agitation to which the public mind was exposed. But this course neither suited the interest of the bank, nor would it have comported with the excited feelings of the implacable enemies of the President. Matters had worked to their liking. By forcing the bill through the two Houses at the eve of the struggle for the President's reëlection, and thus compelling him either to sign or to encounter the responsibility of defeating it, they felt that they had involved the great opponent of the bank,--the only man whose power with the people they really dreaded--in toils from which his escape would be impossible. They were engaged in framing an issue with President Jackson and the Democratic party, looking at that time only to the defeat of his reëlection but which was in 1834 so extended as to involve consequences second only in their importance to those of our struggle for independence from the mother country,--an issue, which was to decide whether the control by the people in affairs of government, the fruit of that great contest, should be continued, or be made to give place to a government controlled by the money power of the country, the trial of which continued much longer than that of the Revolution, and the ultimate results of which were the extinguishment of the bank and the first direct overthrow of the Democratic party since its accession to power in 1800. Able to count their votes in both Houses, and certain of a majority in each, the leading friends of the bank reserved their greatest efforts for the discussion of the veto, the interposition of which they understood the man they had to contend with too well to doubt.