The President and his friends were held up as great state criminals, ruthlessly destroying the property of the people, and meriting punishment--even death. Nor did these publications appear in thoughtless or obscure papers only, but in some of the most weighty and influential of the bank party. Take, for example, this paragraph from a leading paper in the city of New York: "We would put it directly to each and all of our readers, whether it becomes this great people, quietly and tamely to submit to any and every degree of lawless oppression which their rulers may inflict, merely because _resistance_ may involve us in trouble and expose those who resist, to censure? We are very certain their reply will be, '_No_, but at what point is "resistance to commence?"--is not the evil of resistance greater "than the evil of submission?"' We answer promptly, that resistance on the part of a free people, if they would preserve their freedom, should always commence whenever it is made plain and palpable that there has been a deliberate violation of their rights; and whatever temporary evils may result from such resistance, it can never be so great or so dangerous to our institutions, as a blind submission to a most manifest act of oppression and tyranny. And now, we would ask of all--what shadow of right, what plea of expediency, what constitutional or legal justification can MARTIN VAN BUREN offer to the people of the United States, for having brought upon them all their present difficulties by a continuance of the _specie circular_, after two-thirds of their representatives had declared their solemn convictions that it was injurious to the country and should be repealed? Most assuredly, none, and we unhesitatingly say, that it is a more high-handed measure of _tyranny_ than that which cost _Charles_ the 1st his crown and his head--more illegal and unconstitutional than the act of the British ministry which caused the patriots of the revolution to destroy the tea in the harbor of Boston--and one which calls more loudly for resistance than any act of Great Britain which led to the Declaration of Independence."