The spirit of Mr. Adams kindled at this usurpation, and he gave
eloquent utterance to his indignation. Among the remonstrances to
Congress against this act of President Jackson, one from the
Legislature of Massachusetts was sent to him for presentation. In his
attempt to fulfil this duty he was defeated three several times by the
address of the Speaker of the House, and finally deprived of the
opportunity by the previous question. He immediately published the
speech he had intended to deliver, minutely scrutinizing the
President's usurpation of power. The removal of the deposits, and the
contract with the state banks to receive those deposits, he asserts
were both unlawful; and the measure itself neither lawful nor just--an
arbitrary act, without law and against law. He then proceeds to analyze
the whole series of documents adduced by the Secretary of the Treasury,
and by the Committee of Ways and Means in his aid, as _precedents_ to
justify the removal of the deposits, and concludes a lucid and
laborious argument with, "I have thus proved, to the very rigor of
mathematical demonstration, that the Committee of Ways and Means, to
bolster up the lawless act of the Secretary of the Treasury, in
transferring public moneys from their lawful places of deposit to
others, in one of which, at least, the Secretary had an interest of
private profit to himself, have ransacked all the records of the
Treasury, from its first institution in July, 1775, to this day, in
vain. From the whole mass of vouchers, to authenticate the lawful
disposal of the public moneys, which that department can furnish, the
committee have gathered fifty pages of documents, which they would pass
off as _precedents_ for this flagrant violation of the laws, and not
one of them will answer their purpose. One of them alone bears a
partial resemblance to the act of the present secretary; and that one
the very document adduced by the committee themselves pronounces and
proves to be unlawful."

After some remarks upon the office of Secretary of the Treasury, and
the legal restraints upon it, he proceeds: "I believe both the spirit
and the letter of this law to have been violated by the present
Secretary of the Treasury when he transferred the public funds from the
Bank of the United States to the Union Bank of Baltimore, he himself
being a stockholder therein. And so thorough is my conviction of this
principle, and so corrupting and pernicious do I deem the examp