independent of private interest or private control.  For this purpose the message labors, even beyond the measure of all its other labors, to create jealousies and prejudices, on the ground of the alleged benefit which individuals will derive from the renewal of this charter.  Much less effort is made to show that government, or the public, will be injured by the bill, than that individuals will profit by it.  Following up the impulses of the same spirit, the message goes on gravely to allege, that the act, as passed by Congress, proposes to make a present of some millions of dollars to foreigners, because a portion of the stock is held by foreigners.  Sir, how would this sort of argument apply to other cases?  The President has shown himself not only willing, but anxious, to pay off the three per cent stock of the United States at par, notwithstanding that it is notorious that foreigners are owners of the greater part of it.  Why should he not call that a donation to foreigners of many millions?

I will not dwell particularly on this part of the message.  Its tone and its arguments are all in the same strain.  It speaks of the certain gain of the present stockholders, of the value of the monopoly; it says that all monopolies are granted at the expense of the public; that the many millions which this bill bestows on the stockholders come out of the earnings of the people; that, if government sells monopolies, it ought to sell them in open market; that it is an erroneous idea, that the present stockholders have a prescriptive right either to the favor or the bounty of government; that the stock is in the hands of a few, and that the whole American people are excluded from competition in the purchase of the monopoly.  To all this I say, again, that much of it is assumption without proof; much of it is an argument against that which nobody has maintained or asserted; and the rest of it would be equally strong against any charter, at any time.  These objections existed in their full strength, whatever that was, against the first bank.  They existed, in like manner, against the present bank at its creation, and will always exist against all banks.  Indeed, all the fault found with the bill now before us is, that it proposes to continue the bank substantially as it now exists.  “All the objectionable principles of the existing corporation,” says the message, “and most of its odious features, are retained without alleviation”; so that the message is aimed against the bank, as it has existed from the first, and against any and all others resembling it in its general features.