12 enough to admit every thing". Fifty thousand dollars enslaved our fathers but for their resistance who actually expended under them, wilh a justification of ' • • - . .. their principle, and” the admission that there was no stint to the appropriation for carrying them into further,and, it may be added without the slightest exaggeration, boundless effect, is the most alarming fact that has occurred in our history. Its direct tendency is to corrupt the press of the nation. There is no getting rid of this conclusion, if we consult reason. The more we reason, the more the conclusion binds. The premises are not too narrow. Tbey'are ample; most abundant. All that men .want, to achieve the greatest possible results in the physical world, is a grapple or hold in the first instance. So in the moral world. So, most especially, with the press; the workings of which may be so intense, so amazing, when once a pass is opened to the right lever. The Bank, armed, with the principle en bedded in these 'resolutions, is essentially enabled to gain over this most potent of all engines in a popular government, to its, own purpose, whatever it may be. The mind must pause, to estimate the mischief which here bursts upon it. It must give itself up to reflection, to survey the consequences which may ultimately flow to the destiny of the nation. If, even now, we see that it pollutes social life, if even now if exhibits the degrading spectacle of elections, from a President’s tb a Constable’s, marshalled under bank and anti-bank tickets, throughout vast portions of our territory, what may it not arrive at in future ? I do not suppose, far from it, that all presses that defend the bank, do so from enlistment in its service; but amid the din and fury which prevail, who can doubt that much comes from sordid inducements supplied by this institution? What observer of the ordinary springs to human action, so asleep in this instance? whdt imagination so incredulous under proofs so glaring and probabilities so vehement? But by the principle explicitly maintained, any sums may be expended as freely as any hitherto, for hunting down a President like a counterfeiter^ and so, follows from it, unavoidably, all others who oppose the bank. Is not this giving up the whole dispute? Is it not fearful ground taken by the bank, and as true as fearful, and as presumptuous-as true? Any citizen who will escape from the shackles of the bank, place himself in a position to look at it, as incontestable facts really warrant, and then listen to the dictates of a right judgment, may see enough to appal him. Buch was the effect of these facts upon me, who bad formerly been the Bank’s friend'; such their irresistible effect-. We hear of the respectability arid purity of the directors aS a guarantee against danger. I wonder at such an argument. It is unworthy of thousands who inconsiderately give into it. It marks forget, fulness of all safe principles in public affairs. It ' marks forgetfulness, we may hope, of the true cha. racter ofthe American people. It is like the Bank’s 1 plea of self-defence for going to war with the Government. It is specious, but will not bear an instant’s examination. It goes to show the cloud of error that seems to have darkened all sides of this discussion-. When the country put its reprobation on the sedition law, was its doom averted by the personal cha- ,racters of those who upheld it ? I allow to the Bank Directors every respectability; but is any higher elaim to be made for them, than for the Bayards, the Rutledges, the Harpers, the Traceys, the Sedgwicks of that day ? Lord North, who would have uui meir resistance, wno also, as minister, scattered largesses all about him, was of unblemished rectitude as well as eminent ab- complishments in private life. Look at tile present Whig aristocracy who wield the Government of England ! How many of them are of exalted per- sqnal worth ; but would we, of this Republic, adopt tlieir opinions and practises—their pension list _ their sinecures—their church establishment_ their red beok, and all else ? The argument requires but to bo stated, to be exploded. It suits not the understanding of a people accustomed to right maxims in government. It should not for a moment close their mouths, or repress their authorized indignation. It is flying from the point to exclaim, that we date not charge the Directors with wanting pri. vate honor or honesty. We have no such charge to make. But we will ’make any, that duty requires ; nor should public attention be diverted by what seems designed to carry menaces, if to carry any thing, from the precise and only' question. That question is,.had.the Directors, in their corporate capacity," power to Vote the corporate funds, for the purposes mentioned in their resolutions J the funds belonging in part to the nation, and to Vote them without the least limitation ? I pronounce it a high-handed abuse of authority, without the slight, est pretext of right, or semblance of justification— full of danger as Well as of unlawfulness. 1 have given my reasons. The more carefully I examine themj the mote I trace them up to first elements,” the more force do they acquire in my mind. The merit of boldness the resolutions certainly have, and of much candor ; but if to be'tolerated, if to be carried into effect at the will of the Bank, I shall think - the sources of public liber!y among us, poisoned for ever. That institution will become, that institution must become, the master poWer in the State. No demonstration in physics, no apothegm in morals, ever rested on foundation more immutable, than will - this truth in politics. And are an intelligent people, a people watchful over public liberty, to be driven from them by dogmas and sophisms ? . Never : they will exercise theif rights, longer than the Bank can exercise its usurpations. As another excuse, it is sometimes said, that the latter did not, after all, succeed at the last election; as if this proves any thing more than that fifty thousand dollars were not enough ! But who can say what a million may achieve on future occasions; or more if more be re-- quired I The undivided profits of the Bank, its mere sums to play with, have sometimes been more - than a rd'lion, much more ; the whole of which, by its own unwarrantable claim, it may expend upon the press, besides its other means of influence ! Gentlemen, I. must hope for your excuse in making an allusion, not called for, I admit, by your resolutions ; but which forces itself-upon me when I recollect that it is to a portion, of my fellow countrymen in Vermont I am addressing myself. You have, in that State, a large if not predominating number of citizens whom I hold in the highest respect, from the knowledge I have had of others elsewhere, entertaining the-same principles. I mean anti-masons. The belief they had, which I shared with them, of the influence of the masonic institution over the press, was among the primary inducements to their political association. Now, i declare,
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