were earliest in their development and have been
more important in their consequences than any that have arisen under
our complicated and difficult, yet admirable, system of government.
I allude to a national debt and a national bank. It was in these that the
political contests by which the country has been agitated ever since the
adoption of the Constitution in a great measure originated, and there is
too much reason to apprehend that the conflicting interests and opposing
principles thus marshaled will continue as heretofore to produce similar
if not aggravated consequences.

Coming into office the declared enemy of both, I have earnestly
endeavored to prevent a resort to either.

The consideration that a large public debt affords an apology, and
produces in some degree a necessity also, for resorting to a system
and extent of taxation which is not only oppressive throughout, but is
likewise so apt to lead in the end to the commission of that most odious
of all offenses against the principles of republican government, the
prostitution of political power, conferred for the general benefit,
to the aggrandizement of particular classes and the gratification of
individual cupidity, is alone sufficient, independently of the weighty
objections which have already been urged, to render its creation and
existence the sources of bitter and unappeasable discord. If we add
to this its inevitable tendency to produce and foster extravagant
expenditures of the public moneys, by which a necessity is created for
new loans and new burdens on the people, and, finally, refer to the
examples of every government which has existed for proof, how seldom it
is that the system, when once adopted and implanted in the policy of a
country, has failed to expand itself until public credit was exhausted
and the people were no longer able to endure its increasing weight, it
seems impossible to resist the conclusion that no benefits resulting
from its career, no extent of conquest, no accession of wealth to
particular classes, nor any nor all its combined advantages, can
counterbalance its ultimate but certain results--a splendid government
and an impoverished people.

If a national bank was, as is undeniable, repudiated by the framers of
the Constitution as incompatible with the rights of the States and the
liberties of the people; if from the beginning it has been regarded by
large portions of our citizens as coming in direct collision with that
g