election. The President
therefore attacks the establishment which they represent with all the
warmth of personal enmity; and he is encouraged in the pursuit of
his revenge by the conviction that he is supported by the secret
propensities of the majority. The bank may be regarded as the great
monetary tie of the Union, just as Congress is the great legislative
tie; and the same passions which tend to render the States independent
of the central power, contribute to the overthrow of the bank.

The Bank of the United States always holds a great number of the notes
issued by the provincial banks, which it can at any time oblige them to
convert into cash. It has itself nothing to fear from a similar demand,
as the extent of its resources enables it to meet all claims. But
the existence of the provincial banks is thus threatened, and their
operations are restricted, since they are only able to issue a quantity
of notes duly proportioned to their capital. They submit with impatience
to this salutary control. The newspapers which they have bought over,
and the President, whose interest renders him their instrument, attack
the bank with the greatest vehemence. They rouse the local passions and
the blind democratic instinct of the country to aid their cause; and
they assert that the bank directors form a permanent aristocratic body,
whose influence must ultimately be felt in the Government, and must
affect those principles of equality upon which society rests in America.

The contest between the bank and its opponents is only an incident in
the great struggle which is going on in America between the provinces
and the central power; between the spirit of democratic independence
and the spirit of gradation and subordination. I do not mean that the
enemies of the bank are identically the same individuals who, on other
points, attack the Federal Government; but I assert that the attacks
directed against the bank of the United States originate in the same
propensities which militate against the Federal Government; and that the
very numerous opponents of the former afford a deplorable symptom of the
decreasing support of the latter.

The Union has never displayed so much weakness as in the celebrated
question of the tariff. *a The wars of the French Revolution and of 1812
had created manufacturing establishments in the North of the Union,
by cutting off all free communication between America and Europe. When
peace was concluded, and