revenue, to keep the funds secure, and to aid in the establishment of a safe currency. This might have meant a United States Bank. But the President was sure that Jackson in putting his veto upon the renewal of the charter, and Van Buren in opposing a revival of the United States Bank, had been “sustained by the popular voice.” He was equally sure that the pet-bank system and the sub-treasury had been condemned in the same way. But what the “judgment of the American people on that whole subject” was, he did not pretend to know. The representatives of the people should tell him. He only knew that “the late contest, which terminated in the election of General Harrison, was decided upon principles well known and openly declared.” What were those principles? He could say only that “the sub-treasury received the most emphatic condemnation,” but “no other scheme of finance seemed to be concurred in.” He would, therefore, concur with Congress “in the adoption of such a system” as Congress might propose, reserving to himself “the ultimate power of rejecting any measure” which, in his view, should “conflict with the Constitution,” or otherwise “jeopard the prosperity of the country;” but he would not believe that the exercise of that power would be called into requisition.
This was by no means lucid. But if Tyler equivocated, Clay did not. The Whigs had in the twenty-seventh Congress a majority of seven
