Statesman Clay, in possession of the machinery of his party, is resolved to put his own name forward at the head of the next Whig ticket against the formidable General. He foresees that Statesman Calhoun--who is of the General's party of the Democrats--will come to utter grief in his intrigues to supplant the General and make himself a candidate. And yet, the blue-grass Machiavelli can use Statesman Calhoun. The latter is powerful with the Senate. The Senate hates the General as blindly as does Statesman Calhoun. Machiavelli Clay resolves to have advantage of this double condition of hatred. He will beguile the General to attack the Biddle Bank. The attack can only be made by message to Congress. That should be the opportunity of Machiavelli Clay. He will have the Senate for the battle ground; and it shall go hard if he do not emerge with the General defeated and the Bank and Banker Biddle at his back. With such friends in the campaign to come later he should have the General and his party of democracy at his mercy. Thus dreams Machiavelli Clay. It is a beautiful dream--this long-drawn chicane of Machiavelli Clay. As a move toward its realization he suggests the policy of a loan hostility toward the General's friends; for the General will fight almost as quickly for a friend as for a woman. Banker Biddle adopts it, and the Bank develops it in Portsmouth. The paper of one of the General's friends--a Mr. Isaac Hill--is dishonored, and the General's friendship is understood to be the reason. The thing is managed like a challenge, and has the instant effect of bringing the General--ever ready for such a war--to the field. In its invidious attitude toward his friends, the Bank throws down the glove; and the General promptly picks it up. In a message to Congress, he assails the Bank; and the fight is on. Money is always a coward, and commonly a fool. Also its instinct is the weak instinct of corruption. Its attitude toward a public is ever that of the threatening, bullying, bragging terrorist, who will either rule or ruin. It works by fear, and resorts to every quack device. It will gnash its jaws, lash its tail, spout fire and smoke in the face of a quailing world. And yet all this tail-lashing and jaw-gnashing and fire-spouting is a sham. Money, for all its appearance of ferocity, is no more perilous to folk who face it than is the fire-spouting, jaw-gnashing, tail-lashing papier-maché dragon of grand opera. Attack it, and what follows? A couple of rueful supernumeraries crawl abjectly, if grumblingly, from its papier-maché stomach--the complete yet harmless reason of the jaw-gnashing, fire-spouting, tail-lashing from which a frightened world shrunk back. Besides these furious matters, Money does another lying thing. It seeks to teach the public to regard it as the palpitant heart of the country itself. “I am the seat of life!” cries Money. “Touch me, and you die!”