To suppose that a reflecting, self-governing people can be influenced by personal hostilities or partialities in such a contest-to imagine that the sympathies of a mighty nation can be roused and put forth by any visible, outward object, seen and known by one only in ten thousand, is utterly to mistake the true character of mankind, and the secret sources of popular omnipotence. It is only as a sign, a symbol of some invisible power, that any external object can exert a controlling influence over the public mind. Who regards with more than idle curiosity the painted bunting hung out to allure the multitude to some race-field or juggler's show? But convert the idle streamer into the banner of a nation-symbolling and presenting mysteriously, as it were, to the bodily eye, the sanctity of law, the blessings of peace, the consolations of religion, and the endearments of home-and it at once exerts a thrilling power over the heart of every human being who owns a country. When all Paris rolled forth like a flood, and wave after wave beat against the sides of the Bastile until it fell, can any one be so ignorant of the secret springs of human action as to imagine that it was the granite walls, or the few miserable wretches immured within their dungeons, that shot such maniac fury through the heart of a phrenzied multitude, and endowed them with the instinct, the guidance, and the resistless force, of an omnipotent being. It was a consciousness deeper than thought, that there, in those dark, antique turrets,

The committee to whom was referred the petitions concerning the bank established in Philadelphia, and who were instructed to inquire whether the said bank be compatible with the public safety and that equality which ought ever to prevail between the individuals of a republic, beg leave to report:

That it is the opinion of this committee that the said bank, as at present established, is incompatible with the public safety; that, in the present state of our trade, the said bank has a direct tendency to banish a great part of the specie from the country, so as to produce a scarcity of money, and to collect into the hands of the stockholders of the said bank almost the whole of the money which remains among us; that the accumulations of enormous wealth in the hands of a society who claim perpetual duration will, necessarily, produce a degree of influence and power which cannot be entrusted in the hands of any set of men whatsoever, without endangering the public safety; that the said bank, in its corporate capacity, is empowered to hold estates to the amount of ten millions of dollars, and, by the tenor of the present charter, is to exist for ever, without being obliged to yield any emolument to the Government, or to be at all dependent upon it; that the great profits of the bank which will daily increase as money grows scarce, and which already far exceed the profits of European banks, have tempted foreigners to vest their money in this bank, and thus to draw from us large sums for interest.

That foreigners will doubtless be more and more induced to become stockholders, until the time may arrive when this enormous engine of power may become subject to foreign influence; this country may be agitated with the politics of European courts, and the good people of America be reduced once more into a state of subordination and dependence upon some one or other of the European powers. That, at best, if it were even confined to the hands of Americans, it would be totally destructive of that equality which ought to prevail in a republic. We have nothing in our free and equal Government capable of balancing the influence which this bank must create, and we see nothing which, in the course of a few years, can prevent the directors of the bank from governing Pennsylvania. Already we have felt its influence indirectly interfering in the measures of Legislature. Already the House of Assembly, the representatives of the people, have been threatened that the credit of our paper currency will be blasted by the bank; and if this growing evil continues, we fear the time is not very distant when the bank will be able to dictate to the Legislature what laws to pass and what to forbear.

Your committee, therefore, beg leave further to report the following resolution to be adopted by the house, viz:

Resolved, That a committee be appointed to bring in a bill to repeal the act of Assembly passed the first day of April, 1782, entitled "An act to incorporate the subscribers to the Bank of North America," and also to repeal one other act of Assembly passed the 18th of March, 1782, entitled "An act for preventing and punishing the counterfeiting of the common sual, bank bills, and bank notes of the president, directors, and company of the Bank of North America. and for other purposes therein mentioned."

were embodied the tyranny, oppression, and despotism which, growing up age after age, and piling tower upon tower, was then frowning in sad wrath from its lofty battlements, upon an enslaved, down-trodden people, and scowling defiance in their pallid, hunger-bitten faces, every hour of their toilsome and degraded existence.

It was this consciousness, deep-stirring in their bosoms, that set the long-sleeping masses in motion, and sent them welling and billowing against that which was a more complete emblem of tyranny than the poor imbecile Louis, who bore the name of Majesty. In like manner, it was not the parchment of privileges, the impenetrable walls of a marble palace, or the old De Launay, royal superintendent, and his Swiss guards who dwelt therein, that roused the indignation of the people against our American bastile. It was a mightier cause of action-a secret, all-pervading, overshadowing influence, corrupting their agents and sapping their liberties; of which sweeping, overwhelming power that institution was the sign, the symbol, the thinking-head and controlling will.

The Constitution, after a perilous time of disorder and national prostration, was adopted by the people of the States for their common defence and general welfare; and the Government organized under it had been in operation now some forty years, but was perverted in the beginning from its legitimate purposes. That class of men who would live by their wits on the labor of others; who would be clothed with purple and fine linen, and fare sumptuously every day at the expense of the toil and sweat of the poor man's brow; who practise the principles of Cataline, alieni avidus sui profusus-the system of Diddler in the farce, "living any way and well, at any body's expense;" who hung like a dark cloud of croaking, ill-boding ravens on the skirts of our suffering, bleeding armies, defrauding the soldiers, succoring the enemy, and in the hour of triumph, soulless wretches as they were, crying beef! beef! while a patriot camp was wringing with the shouts of victory and independence; ever clamorous for office, scrambling for the merest crumbs of patronage; that class of men, the perennial growth of every clime and every age, seized on the Government in the beginning of its operations, and endeavored to convert it into a machine for funding, banking, and speculating, not only in the national domain, in Indian wars, treaties, annuities, and Indian lands; hut such was their cormorant appetite, that not even the claims of the poor invalid and pensioner, the claims of the toil-worn soldier, which he asked in exchange for his youth, health, fortune, and blood, spent in defence of his country, could escape their rapacious hands. While robbing the poor, and plundering the nation, ever fruitful in expedients, skilful in devices, growing bold with success, and audacious in impunity, they at length assumed omnipotent powers for a government which the people had ordained for limited and specified purposes, and commenced a system of unequal and unjust taxation, beneficial to themselves, but burthensome to the people-a system of taxation, not for revenue, not for the legitimate wants of a Government economically administered, but avowedly for the purpose of fostering and protecting the interests of a few sections and classes of men at the expense of the entire nation. The vast funds, thus accumulated beyond the just wants of Government, were wielded as a kind of magic wand, to sway and influence the opinions of the people, corrupt their principles, change their love of liberty into a thirst for gain, and to bribe them into submission and a right loyal allegiance, by appealing to their hopes, and exciting the expectation that they would obtain a portion of those rich spoils, the fruits of their prostitution and abandonment of principle; but which were at length, by selfish and fraudulent combinations, expended on some road, or canal, or river, or creek, or harbour, not for the common defence and general welfare, but for the immediate and only benefit of those concerned in the speculation. This stupendous system of partial legislation, of fraud and peculation, was checked by the Executive veto on the bill providing for the Maysville road; but it still survives, and, Proteus-like, lives in a thousand shapes, costing the nation, to this day, an annual expenditure of some ten or twelve millions. In tracing the history of our national legislation, it will be observed that the limitations of the Corstitution, and the common good of the whole Union, have been rarely considered

in the adoption of any measure. And with few exceptions, the same observation is true in regard to the Legislatures of the States. To go no further back than seven years, the date of the veto on the bank bill, what has been their employment since that period? Look at their statute books; they are crowded with enactments to alter, amend, enlarge, and create bank charters, banking companies, monopolies, and corporations, for every conceivable purpose within the scope of human enterprise, and even of human imagination. To foster these schemes, to furnish a pabulum for these banks, canals, turnpikes, and railroads to feed upon, the credit of the States have been brought into requisition, and the people, in a new form, saddled with a national debt of more than one hundred and sevenly millions. The banks, thus sustained on the credit of the people, live only by making a lottery of their fortunes, and plundering them of their property. The thousand petty schemes of internal improvement, forced into being by a prodigal expenditure of the public resources, are, with rare exceptions, local and sectional in their character; giving no stimulus to agriculture or enterprise; gotten up for the benefit of corporations and individuals, many of them altogether useless, and all put together, are not able to pay the interest on the money expended in their execution.

While the Legislatures of the States have never lifted themselves up to a comprehensive view of the wants and interests of the whole; never ventured to hazard on some noble enterprise for education and commerce, the little modicum of popularity by which they held their places, ever scrambling for a distribution of the crumbs; intriguing and mousing over their petty, selfish schemes of individual advantage; while thus wasting the resources of the State, and poorly consulting the common weal, all power has been gradually sliding from their hands, and falling into the possession of those corporate institutions which they, from year to year, had created. Where are our men of talents, of wealth, of experience in affairs-men of influence, ambitious of power and distinction? Look at your railroad companies, canai companies, turnpike companies, and banking institutions; there you will find them, presidents, cashiers, treasurers, or directors; men who have been eminent in the councils of the nation, members of Congress, of the Executive cabinet, and senators, are retiring from those exalted stations, and seeking with avidity the offices in the gift of corporate institutions. And wherefore? "Wheresoever the carcase is, there will the eagles be gathered together." Ambitious men seek those stations, because they well know that in them is concentrated the true, substantial power and patronage of the country; that in them is lodged the power behind the throne, greater than the throne itself; that they are the steam engines that put all the wheels of Government in motion, and draw along after them the entire train of legislation. Nine hundred banks-the number is scarcely less-with as many thousand officers, three or four hundred thousand stockholders, near seven hundred thousand debtors, wielding a capital of four hundred millions, a discount loan of five hundred millions; possessing the sovereign prerogative of elevating or debasing at pleasure the currency of the country, controlling a State funded debt of one hundred and seventy millions, and the stocks, funds, and debts of an innumerable host of joint-stock companies, which, together with the banks, constitute an organized, consolidated, well-disciplined Macedonian phalanx, thoroughly imbued with aristocratic ideas of the nobility of money and the degradation of labor; holding that wealth is a virtue, and poverty a crime, monopolizing all the lands, capital, trade, and commerce of the country; marching boldly forward under the direction of influential, wealthy, talented, and ambitious men ; openly aspiring to legislative and governmental control; crowding our national Assembly and State Legislatures with hired and unprincipled orators; corrupting the people in their primary asserablies at the polls and the ballot-box, and recklessly pressing forward to the ultimate overthrow of equal representation, and the establishment of what they designate a mild aristocracy- the open and avowed enemy of Democratic principles. And well have they succeeded in the accomplishment of their purposes. The constitutional form of legislation is an idle mockery; the people may go through the solemn ceremony of electing men to represent them in Congress and the Legisla

tures, but so soon as men arrive on the theatre of action, they universally imbibe the opinions, and fall into the current of feeling most fashionable around them. They soon learn to think that the interests of the banks and of the people are the same: "touch the banks, you touch the people;" they are not long in discovering that the directors and financiers of moneyed corporations are wiser than they are, or their constituents, and that whatever schemes they may desire or recommend must be implicitly adopted. Not to speak of the direct influence brought to bear on their hopes and fears-their expectations of some future good or evil resulting from the tremendous moneyed power of the banks-their personal feelings of pride and vanity are appealed to; and really honest, unsuspecting men, yielding to the attentions and blandishments of those who know so well how to use them, and anxiously seeking to gain the smiles and approbation of those whom they have the weakness to suppose would reflect honor on their acquaintance, soon find themselves the followers and liege subjects of associated wealth. Should these appliances fail, which seldom happens, the more potent weapons of ridicule and denunciation are resorted to; the keen sarcasm, and cutting wit of the pensioned orators, and hireling presses, seldom fail to drive all but the stern uncompromising friends of liberty into silence or neutrality; so that when any question of vital importance comes up, in which the interests of associated wealth and the interests of the people are at issue, the latter have never failed to be found in a hopeless minority.

Events had been steadily and surely advancing to this crisis for more than forty years. Forgetting that eternal vigilance is the price of liberty; imagining that their forefathers had accomplished every thing in ordaining a Constitution of specified powers, and vainly dreaming that all power was vested in themselves; the people at length woke up to a sense of their true condition, and found that their creatures had become omnipotent-that the reins of government had glided from their own hands, and fallen into the possession of an exclusive privileged order; who, without regard to the limitations of the Constitution, or a pretence to the common defence and general welfare, were creating monopolies, immunities and privileges for themselves, engines of oppression, burthensome taxes, and enormous national debts for the people.

They resolved to strike once more for independence. With an unerring instinct and sagacity peculiar to an incensed and outraged people; they struck at the centre of this unholy combination-the sun of the system around which all the lesser luminaries revolved, and from which they drew their light and heat, and the principles of vitality; they struck their first blow at the Bank of the United States, the main pillar of strength to the allied forces; their high tower of defence into which they retreated in the hour of distress for council and succor, and whence went forth the signal for the rally or the onset; they first resolved on the destruction of that 'Mother of Jacobins,' who could call to her aid a thousand affiliated and kindred institutions, living on the pabulum she furnished; owing their existence to her will and forbearance; thinking, feeling, and acting as she thought, felt, and acted; smiling when she smiled, frowning when she frowned; they resolved to crush this vast corporation. In a word, they resolved to level and raze to the earth that which was the sign and symbol of an unseen, overwhelming power which had perverted their Constitution, corrupted their agents, and destroyed their liberties-the bastile of Republican American usurpation, oppression and tyranny. When the decree went forth, pronounced by the Hero of the Iron Nerve, that the Bank of the United States, after the expiration of its present charter, should not be renewed; when that decree was sanctioned and sustained by a virtuous and patriotic people, resolved to restore their wounded and down-trodden Constitution, then commenced the Second War of the Revolution. The second war of revolution,only bloodless as yet, because the largesses,open bribery, violence, and excesses, practised in New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania, could not provoke an honest, self-possessed, and resolute people into similar practices, riots, and excesses-and because a sufficient number of hired myrmidons

could not be procured to fire on their countrymen, and protect, and cover up and con ceal the fraud, corruption and profligacy which had been practised at Harrisburg. Seven long years have we been involved in this war of revolution, and have not yet approached the beginning of the end.

Seven years have nearly elapsed; during that long period many have fallen in the conflict-many passed from the scene of action; many leaders and whole masses of men have changed their position, altered their relations to each other—the old landmarks have been obliterated-darkness has come over the path of the people-the dear objects of their pursuit seem to have eluded them at every step, and they are, apparently, no nearer their attainment than when they first began. Confused and dispirited, they have been meeting in their primary assemblies, and in conventions, to consult and advise together to determine, if they can, how far they have advanced in this warfare for independence; when they may hope to reach the end; who are their faithful friends, trust-worthy guides, good men and true, in whom they might safely confide their destinies? They have been crying to the wardens on the wall-watchman, what of the night!—and to the pilot and the helmsman, look out upon the stars, take the aspect of the heavens, and tell us whither we are drifting, where are the shoals and the breakers, and from what quarter is the storm approach. ing. At this critical and trying moment, it is our purpose to perform the part of faithful sentinels. Placed as a watchman upon the walls, we shall blow the trumpet and warn the people. We shall tell them, as it becometh us, in all plainness and sincerity, the errors of their past course-the dangers which now beset them, and the means of escape; so that, if they heed not the warning, and perish by the sword, their blood will not be required at the watchman's hand.

When the revenues of the people were taken from the Bank of the United States, where they were used for battering down the constitution and the laws, were placed in other depositories, and the whole subject thus brought within reach of legislation, then was the time for the Representatives of the people, in Congress assembled, to have matured some plan for the future collection, safe keeping, and disbursement of the same-some permanent, well-digested plan, which should regard the welfare of the community, and not the interests of a few classes of men-which should separate the Government from all extraneous influence, and place it on the broad principles of equality and justice embodied in the constitution, and which would esteem the moral and political integrity, and the liberties of the people, of infinitly more value than the vain attempt to regulate exchanges and currency by govermental machinery. Few, however, at that time seemed to comprehend the true question before the country. Many honest, sincere friends of the people, circumscribed in their vision, really imagined it was only a crusade against the Bank of the United States; and that when the overthrow of that institution was accomplished, the controversy would be at an end,not dreaming it was a death struggle for power and supremacy, an effort on the part of the people to regain their lost independence, to restore to its natural and constitutional owners that power which an unjust, partial, and unwise legislation had thrown into the hands of corporations, monopolies and speculators, into the hands of a monied aristocracy, a republican oligarchy to which the Bank of the United States was the nucleus of attraction, the thinking-head and controlling will. The true friends of reform, while ignorant of the character and extent of the evil to be remedied, were laboring under a fatal delusion which prevented them from adopting those wise measures demanded by the crisis of the times. Taught only in the school of bank financiers, they were led to believe that the interests of commercs and trade would be greatly promoted by permitting the public revenue to be used by banks, as a fund to operate on in the same manner as though it were their own capital. Such had been the practice of the United States Bank, and all the local banks, and such were the doctrines so zealously inculcated by their friends, that use and custom, and the uncontradicted dogmas of bank emissaries, had at length impressed the minds of honest men with the idea, that there was a sort of propriety, if not ne