Biddle labored manfully to stem the tide. He tried to improve his personal relations with the President, and he even allowed Jackson men to gain control of several of the western branches. The effort, however, was in vain. When he thought the situation right, Biddle brought forward a plan for a new charter which received the assent of most of the members of the official Cabinet, as well as that of some of the "Kitchen" group. But Jackson met the proposal with his unshakable constitutional objections and, to Biddle's deep disappointment, advanced in his first annual message to the formal, public assault. The Bank's charter, he reminded Congress, would expire in 1836; request for a new charter would probably soon be forthcoming; the matter could not receive too early attention from the legislative branch. "Both the constitutionality and the expediency of the law creating this bank," declared the President, "are well questioned by a large portion of our fellow-citizens; and it must be admitted by all that it has failed in the great end of establishing a uniform and sound currency." The first part of the statement was true, but the second was distinctly unfair. The Bank, to be sure, had not established "a uniform and sound" currency. But it had accomplished much toward that end and was practically the only agency that was wielding any influence in that direction. The truth is that the more efficient the Bank proved in this task the less popular it became among those elements of the people from which Jackson mainly drew his strength. Nothing came of the President's admonition except committee reports in the two Houses, both favorable to the Bank; in fact, the Senate report was copied almost verbatim from a statement supplied by Biddle. A year later Jackson returned to the subject, this time with an alternative plan for a national bank to be organized as a branch of the Treasury and hence to have "no means to operate on the hopes, fears, or interests of large masses of the community." In a set of autograph notes from which the second message was prepared the existing Bank was declared not only unconstitutional but dangerous to liberty, "because through its officers, loans, and participation in politics it could build up or pull down parties or men, because it created a monopoly of the money power, because much of the stock was owned by foreigners, because it would always support him who supported it, and because it weakened the state and strengthened the general government." Congress paid no attention to either criticisms or recommendations, and the supporters of the Bank took fresh heart.