During this time there were certain unscrupulous speculators, the buzzards of the panic, whispering commendation into Biddle’s ear while feathering their own nests through the distress of the people.[675] But Webster, alarmed at the havoc, had urged Biddle, through Horace Binney, “that the Bank ought to reduce as slowly and moderately as they can--and occasionally to ease off--where it is requisite to prevent extreme suffering.”[676] This advice aroused the banker’s ire and resulted in no good. It was Biddle’s idea that the Bank’s senatorial champions, instead of suggesting a policy of moderation, should be using the distress as an argument for a new charter. “The relief,” he wrote Joseph Hopkinson, the distinguished lawyer and jurist, “to be useful or permanent, must come from Congress, and from Congress alone. If that body will do its duty, relief will come--if not, the Bank feels no vocation to redress the wrongs of these miserable people. Rely upon that. This worthy President thinks that because he has scalped Indians and imprisoned Judges, he is to have his way with the Bank. He is mistaken.”[677] VIII Meanwhile the Bank was encouraging, inspiring, arranging indignation meetings of the people, where Jackson was arraigned for bringing ruin upon the community, and petitions were drawn asking for the restoration of the deposits. Clay, eager to lash the people into fury, had suggested the plan. “It would be well,” he wrote, “to have a general meeting of the people to memorialize Congress in favor of a restoration of the deposits. Such an example [in Philadelphia] might be followed elsewhere; and it would be more influential as it might be more general.”[678] The artificial nature of many of the petitions was well understood by the Jackson leaders, and the usually elegant John Forsyth had referred to them in the Senate as “these pot-house memorials,” much to the astonishment of Adams.[679] These petitions, according to the plan, were, in many instances, taken to Washington by committees that waited upon the President before presenting them to Congress. Here they were presented in lugubrious speeches calculatingly designed further to fan the fears of the people and keep the panic going. When the New York merchants adopted a memorial and secured the signatures of three thousand people, Tammany Hall ordered meetings in every ward in the city to approve of Jackson’s actions.[680] A few days later, between twelve and fifteen thousand friends of “sound currency by means of a national bank” met at noon in the park. When Hone, selected to preside, reached the park, he found an “immense crowd” composed in large part “of the most respectable mechanics and others of the city--men of character, respectability, and personal worth, with a few miscreants who went, perhaps, of their own accord, but were probably sent there to excite disturbances.” In truth, “the rabble had gotten possession of the