gest to his friends, who looked to him for a “healing measure,” anything that did not “comprehend a national bank as an essential part.” At the same time he frankly declared: “If a national bank be established, its stability and its utility will depend upon the general conviction which is felt of its necessity; and until such a conviction is deeply impressed upon the people, and clearly manifested by them, it would, in my judgment, be unwise even to propose a bank.” That such a bank could be safe and useful only if the people were generally convinced of its necessity, was a statesmanlike observation; if Clay had only adhered to its true meaning when the time of temptation came! The Senate, as then constituted, certainly did not believe in that necessity, for it passed a resolution adverse to the establishment of a national bank by a majority of more than two thirds.
Neither was the conduct of the old Bank of the United States, which, after the expiration of its national charter, continued to exist under a charter obtained from the State of Pennsylvania, calculated to maintain the prestige of its name. When it was severed from the government, it drifted into unsound operations. In the efforts to resume specie payments, which were made mainly under the leadership of the venerable Albert Gallatin, then a bank president in New York, the United States Bank played an obstructive and in many respects questionable part. Clay offered a resolution in the Senate to promote resumption by
