tical instruction
in the principles of banking! Meanwhile everything was done to corner
the Press. Journals favourable to the Bank were financed with loans
issued on the security of their plant. Papers on the other side were,
whenever possible, corrupted by the same method. As for the minor fry of
politics, they were of course bought by shoals.

It is seldom that such a policy, pursued with vigour and determination
by a body sufficiently wealthy to stick at nothing, fails, to carry a
political assembly. With Congress the Bank was completely successful. A
Bill to re-charter that institution passed House and Senate by large
majorities. It was immediately vetoed by the President.

Up to this point, though his private correspondence shows that his mind
had long been made up, there had been much uncertainty as to what
Jackson would do. Biddle, the cunning, indefatigable and unscrupulous
chairman of the Bank, believed up to the last moment that, if Congress
could be secured, he would not dare to interpose. To do so was an
enterprise which certainly required courage. It meant fighting at the
same time an immensely strong corporation representing two-thirds of the
money power of the nation, and with tentacles in every State in the
Union, and a parliamentary majority in both Houses led by a coalition of
all the most distinguished politicians of the day. The President had not
in his Cabinet any man whose name carried such public weight as those of
Clay, Webster, or Calhoun, all now in alliance in support of the Bank;
and his Cabinet, such as it was, was divided. The cleverest and most
serviceable of his lieutenants, Van Buren, was unwilling to appear
prominently in the matter. He feared the power of the Bank in New York
State, where his own influence lay. McLane, his Secretary of the
Treasury, was openly in favour of the Bank, and continued for some time
to assure Biddle of his power to bring the President round to his views.

But, as a fact, the attitude of Jackson was never really in doubt. He
knew that the Bank was corrupting public life; the very passage of the
Bill, against the pledges given by any Congressmen to their
constituents, was evidence of this, if any were needed. He knew further
that it was draining the productive parts of the country, especially the
South and West, for the profit of a lucky financial group in the Eastern
States. He knew also that such financial groups are never national: he
knew that the Bank h