So it was almost a case of "stand and deliver!" "Give us the privilege of being quartered on the people, or we will disrupt the Union, which is so dear to your heart!"

It is hardly necessary to add here that, as Jefferson said, "this measure produced the most bitter and angry contest ever known in Congress before or since the union of the States," or that it engendered in the hearts of the Southern people a resentment against its authors as well as its beneficiaries, which was handed down from father to son long after the cause of it had become a shadowy tradition, or that the quiet submission of the masses of the people to this and other subsequent acts of sectional injustice was due mainly to their want of understanding as to the method of taxing them. If the burden had been understood, as the whiskey tax was in Western Pennsylvania, the President might have needed more than 16,000 troops to put down the insurrection. Nor is it necessary to point out the immense superi

made to 'hold the candle' in this intrigue, being duped into it by the Secretary of the Treasury, and made a tool of for forwarding his schemes, not then sufficiently understood. Hamilton, it seems, applied to Jefferson for his aid and cooperation as a member of the Cabinet in calming an excitement, and bringing about the settlement of a question which seemed to threaten the very existence of the Federal Government. Jefferson proposed to Hamilton to dine with him next day, on which occasion he would invite another friend or two to see whether it ‘were not possible, by some mutual sacrifice of opinion, to form a compromise to save the Union.' At this dinner party the subject was discussed, Jefferson, as he assures us, taking 'no part but an exhortatory one'; and finally it was agreed that, for the sake of the Union, White and Lee, two of the Virginia members, should change their votes on the question of assumption."-Hildreth, Second Series, Volume I, pages 211-12.

But Mr. Jefferson's name was used by the promoters of the corrupt bargain, and he was represented to be one of their supporters. "Mr. Morris," says Maclay, page 294, "also repeated Mr. Jefferson's story, but I certainly had misunderstood Mr. Morris at the Hall, for Jefferson vouched for nothing."

ority of the Northern States in banking facilities, conferred on them by this act, or their superior ability in manufacturing when "protection" began to invite capital into that business.

But there was a lesson in this vile business far more damaging than its injustice; it taught corrupt schemers that the forms of law could be used as a means of robbing the people, while the Constitution provided no tribunal before which their cause could be pleaded. And this lesson became "the direful spring of woes unnumbered"; it laid the foundations of the long struggle for sectional supremacy. If "justice," "domestic tranquillity," "the common defense," "the general welfare," and "the blessings of liberty" had been the sole object of Federal legislation, there could not possibly have been any motive for sectional discontent, and the long and disgraceful struggle for sectional domination, rendered more disgraceful during the last forty years by malignity, mendacity and insolence.'

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'Washington's anxiety for the preservation of the Union, which such legislation as this was threatening to destroy, was his leading motive for accepting a second term. Jefferson wrote to him: “The confidence of the whole country is centered in you. North and South will hang together if they have you to hang on." And Hamilton wrote: "It is clear that if you continue in office nothing materially mischievous is to be apprehended; if you quit, much is to be dreaded."

CHAPTER IX.

THE UNITED STATES BANK-ANOTHER SCHEME TO

ENRICH NORTHERN TRADERS.

In order to still further "strengthen the public credit" and enhance the value of the public securities, the first Congress, under the advice of Secretary Hamilton, converted Robert Morris's Bank of North America into The Bank of the United States. There was no Constitutional authority for such an act; indeed, the power to do it was deliberately withheld in the framing of the Constitution; but it accorded with the views of Mr. Hamilton thus expressed in the Philadelphia Convention: "We must establish a general and National Government, completely sovereign, and annihilate the State distinctions and State operations; and unless we do this, no good purpose can be answered." It was in fact, as President Jackson said in his seventh annual message, "but one of the fruits of a system at war with the genius of all our institutions-a system founded upon a political creed whose great ultimate

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object, and inevitable result, should it prevail, is the consolidation of all powers in our system in one central government."

As on the question of assumption, the division was mainly between the North and the South. The principal advocates of the charter in the Senate, according to Maclay, were King, of New York; Ellsworth, of Connecticut; and Strong, of Massachusetts; and the leading opponents were Izard and Butler, of South Carolina, and Monroe, of Virginia.

The capital of the bank was to be $10,000,000, of which the Federal Treasury was to subscribe $2,000,000

1 Yates, page 141.

in specie, and private stockholders to subscribe the remaining $8,000,000, one-fourth of it in specie and three-fourths of it in public securities or "certificates"; but since the certificates at that time, according to Maclay, were worth only 81 per cent of their nominal value, here was a gratuity," as President Jackson called it in his message vetoing the bank bill," of many "of millions of dollars to the stockholders."

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This was in principle as vile a scheme of robbery as the assumption was; and justly did President Jackson denounce its authors in the following language (eighth annual message): "The facts that the value of the stock was greatly enhanced by the creation of the bank, that it was well understood that such would be the case, and that some of the advocates of the measure were largely benefited by it, belong to the history of the times, and are well calculated to diminish the respect which might otherwise have been due to the action of the Congress which created the Institution."

The meagre report of the discussion of the measure in the Senate, and of the conduct of some of the members-especially his colleague--reveals a deep disgust in Maclay, and warrants the following remark: "I am now more fully convinced than ever before of the propriety of opening our doors. I am confident some gentlemen would have been ashamed to have seen their speeches of this day reflected in the newspapers of to-morrow.”

The amount of wealth belonging to other people thus transferred to the traders and speculators of the Northern States can never be ascertained; but since they drew per cent on their certificates out of the Federal Treasury, and at least twice as much on the bank notes issued on the certificates as a basis of circulation, their income from the certificates was about 22 per cent of their value

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at the time of their subscription; and, as this was an annual increment for many years, we may believe that this bank was one among the powerful forces which transferred the money of the South to the traders and speculators of the North, and thus weakened the ties which bound the Southern States to the Union.

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