The mystified members demanded explanations; and it was a case in which explanations could not be denied. Mr. Biddle, in a public letter to an eminent citizen, on whose name he had been accustomed to hang such productions, (Mr. John Quincy Adams,) attributed the procedure, so far as he had moved in it, to a "_formal application on the part of the legislature to know from him on what terms the expiring bank would receive a charter from it_;" and gave up the names of two members who had conveyed the application. The legislature had no knowledge of the proceeding. The two members whose names had been vouched disavowed the legislative application, but admitted that, in compliance with suggestions, they had written a letter to Mr. Biddle in their own names, making the inquiry; but without the sanction of the legislature, or the knowledge of the committees of which they were members. They did not explain the reason which induced them to take the initiative in so important business; and the belief took root that their good nature had yielded to an importunity from an invisible source, and that they had consented to give a private and bungling commencement to what must have a beginning, and which could not find it in any open or parliamentary form. It was truly a case in which the first step cost the difficulty. How to begin was the puzzle, and so to begin as to conceal the beginning, was the desideratum. The finger of the bank must not be seen in it, yet, without the touch of that finger, the movement could not begin. Without something from the Bank--without some request or application from it, it would have been gratuitous and impertinent, and might have been insulting and offensive, to have offered it a State charter. To apply openly for a charter was to incur a publicity which would be the defeat of the whole movement. The answer of Mr. Biddle to the two members, dexterously treating their private letter, obtained by solicitation, as a formal legislative application, surmounted the difficulty! and got the Bank before the legislature, where there were friends enough secretly prepared for the purpose to pass it through. The terms had been arranged with Mr. Biddle beforehand, so that there was nothing to be done but to vote. The principal item in these terms was the stipulation to pay the State the sum of $1,300,000, to be expended in works of internal improvements; and it was upon this slender connection with the subject that the whole charter referred itself to the committee of "_Inland navigation and internal improvement_;"--to take its place as a proviso to a bill entitled, "_To repeal the State tax, and to continue the improvements of the State by railroads and canals_;"--and to be no further indicated in the title to that act than what could be found under the addendum of that vague and flexible generality, "_other purposes_;" usually added to point attention to something not worth a specification.