Philadelphia who came to complain of the hard times. According to the report they gave, the President was very rude and violent. He ascribed all the trouble to the "monster," as he called the Bank over and over again. He declared that he would introduce a specie currency and that the government should use no other. He evidently knew little of the laws of money and finance, and, although much which he and his supporters afterwards urged in support of this policy was as true and sound as any propositions in physical science, yet it was mixed up with fallacies which neutralized it, and it degenerated into a kind of fanaticism about the precious metals. The measure of distributing the deposits amongst local banks, and thereby stimulating bank credits, was destructive to the other measure of introducing a specie currency. The distribution of the surplus revenue, which had accumulated in the banks amongst the states, was an opposition measure that was passed on account of the foolish belief, which so often leads our politicians astray, that there was political capital in it. Jackson signed the bill, but he criticized it in his next message, giving plain and statesmanlike reasons against it.
I must mention one other institution which took its rise in this period, and that is the national convention. I have already mentioned the Convention of the National Republicans at Baltimore in 1831. The Jackson men held one at Baltimore on May 21, 1832. With this invention our political institutions entered on a new phase, and "politician" acquired a new meaning. The power of party, the binding force of caucus agreements, the conception of bolting a regular nomination as the highest political crime, were developed first in the ranks of the Jackson party, but speedily followed to the best of their ability by the opposition. The Tammany Club of New York was the school in which these political arts were cultivated to the highest pitch, to be imitated elsewhere. There had
