by it, no matter whether the deposits were safe or not, and that Congress had divested itself of all right to interfere. He had, as an executive officer of the government, subject to the direction of the President, removed the deposits for reasons of public interest. By implication he admitted that the bank was solvent and the deposits safe. But, he argued, the bank, by asking Congress four years before the expiration of its charter for a renewal thereof, had submitted itself to the popular judgment at the presidential election which was then impending. The people had pronounced against the bank. A renewal of the charter being therefore out of the question, it was best to begin with the removal of the deposits at once, instead of leaving it to the last moment of the legal existence of the depository. He enlarged upon the President's message in criticising the conduct of the bank. Finally, he preferred state banks as depositories.
Clay opened the attack on December 10. He offered a resolution calling upon the President to inform the Senate whether a paper concerning the removal of the deposits, purporting to have been read to the Cabinet on September 18, 1833, and alleged to have been published by the President's authority, was genuine or not, and, if genuine, to furnish a copy of it to the Senate. The resolution passed. This was an ill-considered movement, for it gave Jackson an opportunity for administering a smart snub to the Senate without leaving the Senate anything to reply. “I have yet to learn,”
