blicans had protested against it in the beginning, but they had
later come to believe in its necessity; and at the time Benton and
Jackson declared war upon it, the Bank was, on the whole, and in spite
of certain minor and local grievances, a popular institution. If the
question of the re-charter of the National Bank had been submitted to
popular vote in 1832, a popular majority would probably have declared in
its favor. Jackson's victory was due partly to his personal popularity,
partly to the unwise manner in which the Bank was defended, but chiefly
to his success in convincing public opinion that the Bank was an
institution whose legal privileges were used to the detriment of the
American people. As a matter of fact, such was not the case. The Bank
was a semi-public corporation, upon which certain exceptional privileges
had been conferred, because the enjoyment of such privileges was
inseparable from the services it performed and the responsibilities it
assumed. When we consider how important those services were, and how
difficult it has since been to substitute any arrangement, which
provides as well both a flexible and a stable currency and for the
articulation of the financial operations of the Federal Treasury with
those of the business of the country, it does not look as if the
emoluments and privileges of the Bank were disproportionate to its
services. But Jackson and his followers never even considered whether
its services and responsibilities were proportionate to its legal
privileges. The fact that any such privilege existed, the fact that any
legal association of individuals should enjoy such exceptional
opportunities, was to their minds a violation of democratic principles.
It must consequently be destroyed, no matter how much the country needed
its services, and no matter how difficult it was to establish in its
place any equally efficient institution.

The important point is, however, that the campaign against the National
Bank uncovered a latent socialism, which lay concealed behind the
rampant individualism of the pioneer Democracy. The ostensible grievance
against the Bank was the possession by a semi-public corporation of
special economic privileges; but the anti-Bank literature of the time
was filled half unconsciously with a far more fundamental complaint.
What the Western Democrats disliked and feared most of all was the
possession of any special power by men of wealth. Their crusade against
the "