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