The first organized money power of serious import, endangering a republican form of government, was the monopoly termed “The Bank of the United States,” incorporated by act of Congress in 1816, for the term of twenty years. And with its millions of easily earned profits, it soon controlled legislation in the interests of wealth and the corporation, causing suffering and disaster to the business of the nation by making prices unstable through contractions and expansions of the mediums of exchange, so that the State of Ohio raised objections to the contemplated establishment of branches of the monopoly within her borders. After much political discussion of the matter, a legislature was elected largely opposed to the money power, and the state in 1818 passed an act in the nature of a high protective tariff, “taxing each branch of the United States Bank located in the State of Ohio fifty thousand dollars.” The bank refused to pay the assessments when due under the act, and, like most monopolies in sight of a supreme court, disregarded the act of legislation and defied the authorities. The law-makers in Ohio, even in that early day, had seen enough to understand the defiant insubordination of wealth, and in the act for collecting the tax from the branch banks due the state, authorized the collector to employ an armed force, if necessary, and to enter the bank and seize money sufficient to cover the claim and costs of collection. This was done by the collector for the “Chillicothe branch,” and the state became defendant, returning with interest the money taken at the end of the usual course of litigation, by an order of the supreme court. It has often been related by those who took part in the great struggle for supremacy of _law_, or _will of the majority of a producing population_, as against the tyrannical usurpations of a money power, with its revolving satellites, that the contest threatened the peace, prosperity and safety of the whole nation. As stated by Hon. Brisben Walker, the institution “quickly became a political power; established branches and agencies throughout the country to _control votes_; spent money freely for _political_ corruption;” and when it went down, was reported in 1839, by a committee of its own stockholders, to have given “_such an exhibition of waste and destruction, and downright plundering and criminal misconduct, as was never seen before in the annals of banking_.