Presidents -- United States -- Messages; United States -- Politics and government -- Sources
We have felt but one class of these dangers exhibited in the contest
waged by the Bank of the United States against the Government for the
last four years. Happily they have been obviated for the present by the
indignant resistance of the people, but we should recollect that the
principle whence they sprung is an ever-active one, which will not fail
to renew its efforts in the same and in other forms so long as there is
a hope of success, founded either on the inattention of the people or
the treachery of their representatives to the subtle progress of its
influence.
The bank is, in fact, but one of the fruits of a system at war with the
genius of all our institutions--a system founded upon a political creed
the fundamental principle of which is a distrust of the popular will as
a safe regulator of political power, and whose great ultimate object
and inevitable result, should it prevail, is the consolidation of all
power in our system in one central government. Lavish public
disbursements and corporations with exclusive privileges would be its
substitutes for the original and as yet sound checks and balances of
the Constitution--the means by whose silent and secret operation a
control would be exercised by the few over the political conduct of the
many by first acquiring that control over the labor and earnings of the
great body of the people. Wherever this spirit has effected an alliance
with political power, tyranny and despotism have been the fruit. If it
is ever used for the ends of government, it has to be incessantly
watched, or it corrupts the sources of the public virtue and agitates
the country with questions unfavorable to the harmonious and steady
pursuit of its true interests.
We are now to see whether, in the present favorable condition of the
country, we can not take an effectual stand against the spirit of
monopoly, and practically prove in respect to the currency as well as
other important interests that there is no necessity for so extensive a
resort to it as that which has been heretofore practiced. The
experience of another year has confirmed the utter fallacy of the idea
that the Bank of the United States was necessary as a fiscal agent of
the Government. Without its aid as such, indeed, in despite of all the
embarrassment it was in its power to create, the revenue has been paid
with punctuality by our citizens, the business of exchange, both
foreign and domestic, has been conducted with convenience, and the
circulating medium has been greatly improved.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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