On the following day the Cabinet was again convened to hear the President’s reasons for his determination, set forth in the famous “Paper Read to the Cabinet.” This document, as read, had been revised and rewritten from the notes sent by Jackson from his retreat at Hampton Roads to Taney, and was to become the storm center of congressional controversy, although it did not concern the Congress in the least. Beginning with a confession of a fixed hostility to the Bank on the conviction of its unconstitutionality and danger to the liberties of the people, he elaborately reviewed the charter controversy. The people had passed upon his conduct at the polls and he had been overwhelmingly vindicated. The Nation, therefore, having definitely decided on the abandonment of the Bank as a place of deposit, some method should be devised for the future deposit of the public funds before the expiration of the charter. Under the law, the Secretary of the Treasury could withdraw the deposits whenever he saw fit, provided he informed Congress of his act at the earliest opportunity. To leave the deposits with the Bank until the day of the expiration of the charter with the expectation of making the transfer to some other depository at once would mean “serious inconvenience to the Government and people.” Such work, he thought, “ought not to be the work of months only, but of years,” for otherwise “much suffering and distress would be brought upon the people.” These considerations alone, he thought sufficient to justify the step he proposed. But in the conduct of the Bank additional and more pressing reasons could be found. Knowing of the Government’s decision to appropriate the greater part of its deposits during 1832 to the payment of the public debt, the Bank, in the sixteen months preceding May, 1832, had extended its loans more than $28,000,000, and the maximum of the extension had been made in May. And two months before that, the Bank had so perfectly understood its inability to pay over the public deposits when called upon, that it had secretly negotiated with foreign holders of the three per cent stock a year’s postponement of a demand for payment after notice should be given by the Government. “This effort to thwart the Government in the payment of the public debt,” he said, “that it might retain the public money to be used for their private interests, palliated by pretenses notoriously unfounded and insincere, would have justified the instant withdrawal of the public deposits.”