This notice of the presidential election of 1836 has somewhat anticipated the course of events.  Soon after the tariff compromise had been effected, Mr. Webster renewed his relations with Mr. Clay, and, consequently, with Mr. Calhoun, and their redoutable antagonist in the President’s chair soon gave them enough to do.  The most immediate obstacle to Mr. Webster’s alliance with General Jackson was the latter’s attitude in regard to the bank.  Mr. Webster had become satisfied that the bank was, on the whole, a useful and even necessary institution.  No one was better fitted than he to decide on such a question, and few persons would now be found to differ from his judgment on this point.  In a general way he may be said to have adopted the Hamiltonian doctrine in regard to the expediency and constitutionality of a national bank.  There were intimations in the spring of 1833 that the President, not content with preventing the re-charter of the bank, was planning to strike it down, and practically deprive it of even the three years of life which still remained to it by law.  The scheme was perfected during the summer, and, after changing his Secretary of the Treasury until he got one who would obey, President Jackson dealt his great blow.  On September 26 Mr. Taney signed the order removing the deposits of the government from the Bank of the United States.  The result was an immediate contraction of loans, commercial distress, and great confusion.

The President had thrown down the gage, and the leaders of the opposition were not slow to take it up.  Mr. Clay opened the battle by introducing two resolutions,—­one condemning the action of the President as unconstitutional, the other attacking the policy of removal, and a long and bitter debate ensued.  A month later, Mr. Webster came forward with resolutions from Boston against the course of the President.  He presented the resolutions in a powerful and effective speech, depicting the deplorable condition of business, and the injury caused to the country by the removal of the deposits.  He rejected the idea of leaving the currency to the control of the President, or of doing away entirely with paper, and advocated the re-charter of the present bank, or the creation of a new one; and, until the time for that should arrive, the return of the deposits, with its consequent relief to business and a restoration of stability and of confidence for the time being at least.  He soon found that the administration had determined that no law should be passed, and that the doctrine that Congress had no power to establish a bank should be upheld.  He also discovered that the constitutional pundit in the White House, who was so opposed to a single national bank, had created, by his own fiat, a large number of small national banks in the guise of state banks, to which the public deposits were committed, and the collection of the public revenues intrusted.  Such an arbitrary policy, at once so ignorant, illogical, and dangerous, aroused Mr. Webster