Allow me, now, Sir, to take notice of an argument founded on the practical operation of the bank.  That argument is this.  Little of the stock of the bank is held in the West, the capital being chiefly owned by citizens of the Southern and Eastern States, and by foreigners.  But the Western and Southwestern States owe the bank a heavy debt, so heavy that the interest amounts to a million six hundred thousand a year.  This interest is carried to the Eastern States, or to Europe, annually, and its payment is a burden on the people of the West, and a drain of their currency, which no country can bear without inconvenience and distress.  The true character and the whole value of this argument are manifest by the mere statement of it.  The people of the West are, from their situation, necessarily large borrowers.  They need money, capital, and they borrow it, because they can derive a benefit from its use, much beyond the interest which they pay.  They borrow at six per cent of the bank, although the value of money with them is at least as high as eight.  Nevertheless, although they borrow at this low rate of interest, and although they use all they borrow thus profitably, yet they cannot pay the interest without “inconvenience and distress”; and then, Sir, follows the logical conclusion, that, although they cannot pay even the interest without inconvenience and distress, yet less than four years is ample time for the bank to call in the whole, both principal and interest, without causing more than a light pressure.  This is the argument.

Then follows another, which may be thus stated.  It is competent to the States to tax the property of their citizens vested in the stock of this bank; but the power is denied of taxing the stock of foreigners; therefore the stock will be worth ten or fifteen per cent more to foreigners than to residents, and will of course inevitably leave the country, and make the American people debtors to aliens in nearly the whole amount due the bank, and send across the Atlantic from two to five millions of specie every year, to pay the bank dividends.

Mr. President, arguments like these might be more readily disposed of, were it not that the high and official source from which they proceed imposes the necessity of treating them with respect.  In the first place, it may safely be denied that the stock of the bank is any more valuable to foreigners than to our own citizens, or an object of greater desire to them, except in so far as capital may be more abundant in the foreign country, and therefore its owners more in want of opportunity of investment.  The foreign stockholder enjoys no exemption from taxation.  He is, of course, taxed by his own government for his incomes, derived from this as well as other property; and this is a full answer to the whole statement.  But it may be added, in the second place, that it is not the practice of civilized states to tax the property of foreigners under such circumstances.  Do we