and, with the expectation that it would have the approval of the President, it was rushed through the House in hot haste. But, while it hung in the Senate, rumors were abroad that President Tyler had again changed his mind. It passed the Senate on September 3, and on the 9th came a veto message prepared, as Henry A. Wise says, in a conference with friends outside of the Cabinet, by one of them. It criticised some of the provisions of the bill, indicated that the President would not approve the incorporation of a national bank in any form, and expressed an anxious desire for “harmony.”
The verdict of impartial history will probably be that John Tyler, when preventing by his veto the incorporation of another United States Bank, rendered his country a valuable service. Had Clay's bill become a law, the new bank would at once have been attacked by the Democratic opposition seeking to compass the repeal of its charter, — a purpose openly avowed by them. It is very doubtful whether, with such a prospect, capitalists would have been found willing to venture their means in such an enterprise. In any event, the existence of the greatest financial institution in the country would have depended on the fortunes of a political party, and with it, in a great measure, the currency and the credit system. Being the subject of party struggles, the bank would have been driven by the force of circumstances to become a political agency, and thus a hotbed of corruption, financially
