Thomas Benton - Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)

"6. Because it has become a practical violation of one of the most equitable clauses in the constitution of the United States – the clause which declares that duties, taxes, and excises, shall be uniform throughout the Union. There is no uniformity in the operation of this tax. Far from it. It empties the pockets of some, and fills the pockets of others. It returns to some five times as much as they pay, and to others it returns not a cent. It gives to the fishing interest two hundred and fifty thousand dollars per annum, and not a cent to the farming interest, which, upon the same principle, would be entitled to six hundred thousand dollars per annum.

"7. Because this duty now rests upon a false basis – a basis which makes it the interest of one part of the Union to keep it up, while it is the interest of other parts to get rid of it. It is the interest of the West to abolish this duty: it is the interest of the Northeast to perpetuate it. The former loses money by it; the latter makes money by it; and a tax that becomes a money-making business is a solecism of the highest order of absurdity. Yet such is the fact. The treasury records prove it, and it will afford the Northeast a brilliant opportunity to manifest their disinterested affection to the West, by giving up their own profit in this tax, to relieve the West from the burthen it imposes upon her.

"8. Because the repeal of the duty will not materially diminish the revenue, nor delay the extinguishment of the public debt. It is a tax carrying money out of the treasury, as well as bringing it in. The issue is two hundred and fifty thousand dollars, perhaps the full amount which accrues on the kind of salt to which the abolition extends. The duty, and the fishing allowances bottomed upon it, falling together as they did when Mr. Jefferson was President, would probably leave the amount of revenue unaffected.

"9. Because it belongs to an unhappy period in the history of our government, and came to us, in its present magnitude, in company with an odious and repudiated set of measures. The maximum of twenty cents a bushel on salt was fixed in the year '98, and was the fruit of the same system which produced the alien and sedition laws, the eight per cent. loans, the stamp act, the black cockade, and the standing army in time of peace. It was one of the contrivances of that disastrous period for extorting money from the people, for the support of that strong and splendid government which was then the cherished vision of so many exalted heads. The reforming hand of Jefferson overthrew it, and all the superstructure of fishing allowances which was erected upon it. The exigencies of the late war caused it to be revived for the term of the war, and the interest of some, and the neglect of others, have permitted it to continue ever since. It is now our duty to sink it a second time. We profess to be disciples of the Jeffersonian school; let us act up to our profession, and complete the task which our master set us."

It has been already shown that General Jackson in his first annual message to Congress, called in question both the constitutionality and expediency of the national bank, in a way to show him averse to the institution, and disposed to see the federal government carried on without the aid of such an assistant. In the same message he submitted the question to Congress, that, if such an institution is deemed essential to the fiscal operations of the government, whether a national one, founded upon the credit of the government, and its revenues, might not be devised, which would avoid all constitutional difficulties, and at the same time secure all the advantages to the government and country that were expected to result from the present bank. I was not in Washington when this message was prepared, and had had no conversation with the President in relation to a substitute for the national bank, or for the currency which it furnished, and which having a general circulation was better entitled to the character of "national" than the issues of the local or State banks. We knew each other's opinions on the question of a bank itself: but had gone no further. I had never mentioned to him the idea of reviving the gold currency – then, and for twenty years – extinct in the United States: nor had I mentioned to him the idea of an independent or sub-treasury – that is to say, a government treasury unconnected with any bank – and which was to have the receiving and disbursing of the public moneys. When these ideas were mentioned to him, he took them at once; but it was not until the Bank of the United States should be disposed of that any thing could be done on these two subjects; and on the latter a process had to be gone through in the use of local banks as depositories of the public moneys which required several years to show its issue and inculcate its lesson. Though strong in the confidence of the people, the President was not deemed strong enough to encounter all the banks of all the States at once. Temporizing was indispensable – and even the conciliation of a part of them. Hence the deposit system – or some years' use of local banks as fiscal agents of the government – which gave to the institutions so selected, the invidious appellation of " pet banks ;" meaning that they were government favorites.

In the mean time the question which the President had submitted to Congress in relation to a government fiscal agent, was seized upon as an admitted design to establish a government bank – stigmatized at once as a "thousand times more dangerous" than an incorporated national bank – and held up to alarm the country. Committees in each House of Congress, and all the public press in the interest of the existing Bank of the United States, took it up in that sense, and vehemently inveighed against it. Under an instruction to the Finance Committee of the Senate, to report upon a plan for a uniform currency, and under a reference to the Committee of Ways and Means of the House, of that part of the President's message which related to the bank and its currency, most ample, elaborate and argumentative reports were made – wholly repudiating all the suggestions of the President, and sustaining the actual Bank of the United States under every aspect of constitutionality and of expediency: and strongly presenting it for a renewal of its charter. These reports were multiplied without regard to expense, or numbers, in all the varieties of newspaper and pamphlet publication and lauded to the skies for their power and excellence, and triumphant refutation of all the President's opinions. Thus was the "war of the bank" commenced at once, in both Houses of Congress, and in the public press; and openly at the instance of the bank itself, which, forgetting its position as an institution of the government, for the convenience of the government, set itself up for a power, and struggled for a continued existence – in the shape of a new charter – as a question of its own, and almost as a right. It allied itself at the same time to the political party opposed to the President, joined in all their schemes of protective tariff, and national internal improvement: and became the head of the American system. With its moneyed and political power, and numerous interested affiliations, and its control over other banks, brokers and money dealers, it was truly a power, and a great one: and, in answer to a question put by General Smith, of Maryland, chairman of the Finance Committee of the Senate already mentioned (and appended with other questions and answers to that report), Mr. Biddle, the president, showed a power in the national bank to save, relieve or destroy the local banks, which exhibited it as their absolute master; and, of course able to control them at will. The question was put in a spirit of friendship to the bank, and with a view to enable its president to exhibit the institution as great, just and beneficent. The question was: " Has the bank at any time oppressed any of the State banks? " and the answer: " Never. " And, as if that was not enough, Mr. Biddle went on to say: " There are very few banks which might not have been destroyed by an exertion of the power of the bank. None have been injured. Many have been saved. And more have been, and are constantly relieved, when it is found that they are solvent but are suffering under temporary difficulty. " This was proving entirely too much. A power to injure and destroy – to relieve and to save the thousand banks of all the States and Territories was a power over the business and fortunes of nearly all the people of those States and Territories: and might be used for evil as well as for good; and was a power entirely too large to be trusted to any man, with a heart in his bosom – or to any government, responsible to the people; much less to a corporation without a soul, and irresponsible to heaven or earth. This was a view of the case which the parties to the question had not foreseen; but which was noted at the time; and which, in the progress of the government struggle with the bank, received exemplifications which will be remembered by the generation of that day while memory lasts; and afterwards known as long as history has power to transmit to posterity the knowledge of national calamities.