lost
him what support he could still count upon among the politicians.
Calhoun was now leagued with Clay and Webster, and the "front bench" men
(as we should call them) were a united phalanx of opposition. It is
characteristic of his courage that in face of such a situation Jackson
ventured to challenge the richest and most powerful corporation in
America.

The first United States Bank set up by Alexander Hamilton as part of his
scheme for creating a powerful governing class in America was, as we
have seen, swept away by the democratic reaction which Jefferson led to
victory. The second, springing out of the financial embarrassments which
followed the war with Great Britain, had been granted a charter of
twenty years which had now nearly expired. The renewal of that charter
seemed, however, to those who directed the operations of the Bank and to
those who were deep in the politics of Washington, a mere matter of
course.

The Bank was immensely powerful and thoroughly unpopular. The antinomy
would hardly strike a modern Englishman as odd, but it was anomalous in
what was already a thoroughly democratic state. It was powerful because
it had on its side the professional politicians, the financiers, the
rich of the great cities generally--in fact, what the Press which such
people control calls "the intelligence of the nation." But it was hated
by the people, and it soon appeared that it was hated as bitterly by the
President. Writers who sympathize with the plutocratic side in the
quarrel had no difficulty in convicting Jackson of a regrettable
ignorance of finance. Beyond question he had not that intimate
acquaintance with the technique of usury which long use alone can give.
But his instincts in such a matter were as keen and true as the
instincts of the populace that supported him. By the mere health of his
soul he could smell out the evil of a plutocracy. He knew that the bank
was a typical monopoly, and he knew that such monopolies ever grind the
faces of the poor and fill politics with corruption. And the corruption
with which the Bank was filling America might have been apparent to
duller eyes. The curious will find ample evidence in the records of the
time, especially in the excuses of the Bank itself, the point at which
insolence becomes comic being reached when it was gravely pleaded that
loans on easy terms were made to members of Congress because it was in
the public interest that such persons should have prac