bring an enormous pressure upon the President and Congress for the purpose of extorting from them the restoration of the deposits and the grant of a new charter. A monopoly so malicious and tyrannical must, of course, be in the highest degree dangerous to the public welfare and to popular liberty: it had to be put down, and there was nobody to put it down save the old hero; he was willing, and it was for this that the “minions of the money power,” the “slaves of the monster monopoly,” the “subjects of the bank,” in the Senate, were persecuting him.
With the first session of the twenty-third Congress the struggle about the Bank of the United States was substantially decided. The great parliamentary cannonade in the Senate had availed nothing. The storm of distress petitions had been without effect. Jackson had remained firm. The House of Representatives had passed by large majorities a series of resolutions reported by James K. Polk, that the deposits should not be restored, and that the bank charter should not be renewed. Popular sentiment ran in the same direction. The bank was doomed. Jackson went on denouncing it in his messages, and distressing it with all sorts of hostile measures; but all energy of resistance was gone. It would have been well for Clay and his party had they recognized the fact that not only this Bank of the United States could not be saved, but that no other great central bank, as the fiscal agent of the government, could be put in its place with benefit to the country.
