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The importance of the principles involved in the inquiry whether it will be proper to recharter the Bank of the United States requires that I should again call the attention of Congress to the subject. Nothing has occurred to lessen in any degree the dangers which many of our citizens apprehend from that institution as at present organized.
Do not gentlemen remember the case of that same Supreme Court, some twenty-five or thirty years ago, deciding that a National Bank was Constitutional? * The Bank charter ran out, and a recharter was granted by Congress. That re-charter was laid before General Jackson.
His fault was something more than the veto on the recharter of the Bank by Congress, which he had a constitutional right to make; it was a vindictive assault on an important institution before its charter had expired, even in his first message to Congress.
And sure enough, the President, in his message, astonished the whole country by a paragraph attacking the Bank, and opposing its recharter. The part of the message about the Bank was referred to both Houses of Congress. The committees reported in favor of the Bank, as nothing could be said against its management.
He took care, in his Message vetoing the recharter of the Bank, to employ some of the arguments which Clay had used in opposing the recharter of the United States Bank in 1811.
"You and Ford are brothers in good standing, I take it. However, if they insist on doing business through me, in order that they may hold me responsible, I'll simply recharter to you at the same rate." "Lovely!" cried Messrs. Ford & Carter in unison. Ten minutes later J. Augustus Redell burst into Cappy Ricks' sanctum and wakened the old gentleman from his afternoon siesta.
A bill to recharter the national bank, which Gallatin regarded as an indispensable fiscal agent, was defeated; and a bill providing for a general increase of duties on imports to meet the deficit was laid aside. Congress would authorize a loan of five million dollars but no new taxes.
The weight of the precedent of the bank of 1791 and the sanction of the great name of Washington, which has been so often invoked in its support, are greatly weakened by the development of these facts. The experiment of that bank satisfied the country that it ought not to be continued, and at the end of twenty years Congress refused to recharter it.
This power has been exercised by the Vice-President in a few instances, the most important of which was the rejection of the bill to recharter the Bank of the United States in 1811.
In the earlier part of his career, in 1811, he had opposed a recharter of Hamilton's National Bank as a dangerous money-corporation, and withal unconstitutional on the ground that the general government had no power to charter companies.
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