most every interest in Mississippi: especially was this true of the
planting, the great interest of the State. On the healthy condition of
him who tills the soil depends that of every other interest. The rapid
rise in cotton, commencing in 1832, from the increased demand all over
the world for cotton fabrics, caused a heavy immigration to the fertile
cotton-lands of the West, and particularly to the extensive and newly
acquired lands of Mississippi. The world was at peace, and great
prosperity was universal; money was cheap, or rather its
representative, bank paper. The system of finance, so wisely conceived
and put in practical operation subsequently to the war of 1812, had
been disturbed by being made an element in the political struggles of
party. It had paid the war debt, and all the expenses of the
Government--furnished a uniform currency, equal to, and at the holder's
will convertible into coin. Its face was the nation's faith, and its
credit equal in New York, London, and Calcutta. A surplus fund was
accumulating in the United States Treasury, and the unexampled instance
of a nation out of debt, and with an accumulating surplus of money in
her treasury, was presented to the world by the United States.

The political economist, from this fact, would naturally infer that the
people were heavily taxed: not so; there was not on earth a people who
contributed, in proportion to their means, so little to the support of
their Government. The tax-gatherer of the nation was never seen or
known in the house of any citizen; he knew not that he contributed one
dollar to the public treasury. So admirably was the source of revenue
contrived, that no man knew or felt he paid a national tax. The Bank of
the United States received and disbursed the moneys arising from
customs, or tariffs upon imports, without one cent of expense to the
Government; affording at the same time every healthy facility to the
commerce of the country--holding in check and confining the local State
banks to a legitimate business--and was the most complete and perfect
fiscal agent ever organized. In the struggle for party ascendency, the
idea was conceived of using the bank in aid of one of the factions
which divided the country. The machinators of this scheme failed to
accomplish it, and, being in power at the time, determined to destroy
it, upon the plea of its unconstitutionality, and of having been used
to overturn the Government--that is, the party in