ON THE BANK OF THE UNITED STATES; OR, 26 A REVIEW OF THE MEASURES OF THE ADMINISTRA- "Darkness was upon the face of the deep." Philadelphia: KEY & BIDDLE, 23 MINOR STREET. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following sheets carry with them whatever apology may be necessary for their publication. When interests, so important to the country as a sound and uniform currency and the legitimate construction of the Constitution, are endangered, it is not less the duty, than the privilege, of the citizen, to participate in their discussion. It seemed to the author, that a concise account of the war on the Bank, with an inquiry into its causes and effects, would, at this moment, be useful in determining the great questions which Congress have remitted for decision to the people. In preparing such a work, he has derived much assistance from the debates in Congress; and has used, frequently with, yet often without, acknowledgment, the opinions of the principal debaters, governed by no other motive in his extracts, than to render his own views effective. June 23, 1834. THE WAR ON THE BANK. THE foreigner, who, impelled by the desire to provide for himself and his progeny a safe and happy home, should have visited this country in May 1833, would have found, everywhere, abundantly, all the public and private sources of enjoyment which the most favourable descriptions of our government, our people, and our pursuits, might have taught him to expect. He would have beheld "the people delighted or contented with the apparent adjustment of some of the most fearful controversies that had ever divided them;" the debt, which, for many years, pressed upon the national resources, extinguished; the necessaries, and many of the luxuries of life, freed from impost, attainable almost at the cost of production; our money currency, the great instrument of successful economy, in a uniform and sound state; the chief magistrate of the Union, lately elected by a large majority, in condition to give to his administration the greatest unanimity, zeal and success, and, almost to extinguish party feuds; nature rewarding the husbandman with exuberant crops, and trade replenishing the coffers of the merchant and the nation; "the spindle and the shuttle, and every instrument of mechanic industry, pursuing their busy labours with profit; and internal improvements bringing down the remotest West to the shores of the Atlantic, and combining and compacting the dispersed inhabitants of our widely extended territory, as the inhabitants of a single state." Satisfied with the scenes around him, and the pleasant anticipations they justified, our foreigner would have returned to the eastern shores of the Atlantic to prepare for emigration. But how changed the scene, when, in May 1834, he should revisit it! The great works which were annihilating time and space are suspended, or sluggishly prosecuted; the contractors for public loans, and the subscribers to corporate stocks, being unable to pay their instalments; the instruments of the mechanic are idle, and their dispirited master, unemployed, either suffers want or |