Immediately following this last charge, there are several insinuations in the resolution, which are too silly to require any sort of notice, were it not for the fact that they conclude by saying, “to the great injury of the people at large.”  In answer to this I would say that it is strange enough, that the people are suffering these “great injuries,” and yet are not sensible of it!  Singular indeed that the people should be writhing under oppression and injury, and yet not one among them to be found to raise the voice of complaint.  If the Bank be inflicting injury upon the people, why is it that not a single petition is presented to this body on the subject?  If the Bank really be a grievance, why is it that no one of the real people is found to ask redress of it?  The truth is, no such oppression exists.  If it did, our people would groan with memorials and petitions, and we would not be permitted to rest day or night, till we had put it down.  The people know their rights, and they are never slow to assert and maintain them, when they are invaded.  Let them call for an investigation, and I shall ever stand ready to respond to the call.  But they have made no such call.  I make the assertion boldly, and without fear of contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank.  It has doubled the prices of the products of their farms, and filled their pockets with a sound circulating medium, and they are all well pleased with its operations.  No, Sir, it is the politician who is the first to sound the alarm (which, by the way, is a false one.) It is he, who, by these unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and direct.  It is he, and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of the people’s public treasure, for no other advantage to them than to make valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry.  Mr. Chairman, this work is exclusively the work of politicians; a set of men who have interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from honest men.  I say this with the greater freedom, because, being a politician myself, none can regard it as personal.

Again, it is charged, or rather insinuated, that officers of the Bank have loaned money at usurious rates of interest.  Suppose this to be true, are we to send a committee of this House to inquire into it?  Suppose the committee should find it true, can they redress the injured individuals?  Assuredly not.  If any individual had been injured in this way, is there not an ample remedy to be found in the laws of the land?  Does the gentleman from Coles know that there is a statute standing in full force making it highly penal for an individual to loan money at a higher rate of interest than twelve per cent?  If he does not he is too ignorant to be placed at the head of the committee which his resolution purposes and if he does, his neglect to mention it shows him to be too uncandid to merit the respect or confidence of any one.