On the 19th day of January, in the year 1836, a bill was reported in the House of Representatives of the General Assembly of Pennsylvania, entitled, "_An act to repeal the State tax, and to continue the improvement of the State by railroads and canals; and for other purposes_." It came from the standing committee on "_Inland navigation and internal improvement_;" and was, in fact, a bill to repeal a tax and make roads and canals, but which, under the vague and usually unimportant generality of "_other purposes_," contained the entire draught of a charter for the Bank of the United States--adopting it as a Pennsylvania State bank. The introduction of the bill, with this addendum, colossal tail to it, was a surprise upon the House. No petition had asked for such a bank: no motion had been made in relation to it: no inquiry had been sent to any committee: no notice of any kind had heralded its approach: no resolve authorized its report: the unimportant clause of "_other purposes_," hung on at the end of the title, could excite no suspicion of the enormous measures which lurked under its unpretentious phraseology. Its advent was an apparition: its entrance an intrusion. Some members looked at each other in amazement. But it was soon evident that it was the minority only that was mystified--that a majority of the elected members in the House, and a cluster of exotics in the lobbies, perfectly understood the intrusive movement:--in brief, it had been smuggled into the House, and a power was present to protect it there. This was the first intimation that had reached the General Assembly, the people of Pennsylvania, or the people of the United States, that the Bank of the United States was transmigrating! changing itself from a national to a local institution--from a federal to a State charter--from an imperial to a provincial institution--retaining all the while its body and essence, its nature and attributes, its name and local habitation. It was a new species of metempsychosis, heretofore confined to souls separated from bodies, but now appearing in a body that never had a soul: for that, according to Sir Edward Coke, is the psychological condition of a corporation--and, above all, of a moneyed corporation.