Bank. The reduction of the currency from $110,000,000, according to Mr. Crawford, to $15,000,000, in the short period of three years, is sufficient evidence of the terrible waste and destruction which all contemporaneous writers describe. In spite of all the efforts that the Bank could exert, vast numbers of State Banks were, for a long time after its organization, constantly coming into and going out of existence. It was not till after 1826 that the financial condition of the country seemed fully restored.

The report of the House Committee was generally accepted as effectually disposing of the attack by the President upon the Bank. Its friends, however, counted wholly without their host. They knew little of the man with whom they had to deal, and as little of the causes already at work which were to produce an outburst of fanaticism that was to sweep with resistless fury over the nation. Jefferson, who had carried the doctrine of nullification to the extremest limits short of an overt act, was followed by Presidents, who, from their characters rather than from purpose, tended to restore the government to the model of Washington and Hamilton. Madison who earnestly opposed, on constitutional grounds, the chartering of the first Bank; and who, as a member of the Legislature of Virginia, wrote an elaborate report in vindication of the Resolutions of 1798-wholly abandoned his former position, by recommending, and affixing his signature to, the Act incorporating, in 1816, the second Bank. His reasons were those which should influence and control the judgment of every rightminded man, the uniform precedents, through a long series of years, of the National Legislature, and of the legal tribunal of last resort. Monroe followed by the approval of the Bill making provision for elaborate surveys, with a view to the construction of extended lines of public works. Under such administrations, which accepted the precedents of the past as their guide, and which left the articulations of the people almost wholly free, the nation entered upon a period of natural and orderly development, inferring the functions of government from the advantages resulting from their exercise. Such is the inference of every people capable of order and progress.

1 After his accession to the Presidency, he discharged from custody parties held under the Alien and Sedition Laws, on the ground that such laws were void from their unconstitutionality.

This tendency, thoroughly pronounced, caused the greatest consternation on the part of Jefferson, who lost not a moment in sounding the alarm that the country, under the loose construction of the Constitution which was everywhere prevailing, was tending toward consolidation and monarchy, all, however, for a time to very little purpose. So long as Virginians occupied the presidential chair, it was very difficult to revive the old, or divide the country upon new, issues. During the latter part of Mr. Monroe's administration, political parties seemed to have wholly disappeared. He had returned to the sentiments and practice of one, without seeming to have deserted those of the other. To him succeeded the second Adams, not by the choice of the people, but by that of Congress. His election was the signal for the immediate revival of the old parties, with all their former bitterness. In place of Virginians, the laxity of whose political morals could be overlooked out of respect to their citizenship, services, and character, came a Puritan of the Puritans, - severe in his manners and life, of all men the most obnoxious to the South; and who, to crown all, was far more free in the construction of the Constitution than Hamilton himself.1 His election was an insult to the ideas, institutions, and dignity of the South. It was an accident resulting from want of proper precaution and organization, and was by no means to be allowed to happen a second time.

The unanimity and earnestness with which Mr. Adams was opposed at the South, and the ease with which, by the help of Northern allies, he was defeated when he ran for a second

1 "The question of the power of Congress to authorize the making of internal improvements is, in other words, a question whether the people of this Union, in forming their common social compact, as avowedly for the purpose of promoting their general welfare, have performed their work in a manner so ineffably stupid as to deny themselves the means of bettering their own condition. I have too much respect for the intellect of my country to believe it. The first object of human association is the improvement of the condition of the associated. Roads and canals are among the essential means of improving the condition of nations; and a people which should deliberately, by the organization of its authorized power, deprive itself of the faculty of multiplying its own blessings, would be as wise as a creator who should undertake to constitute a human being without a head."-Letter of John Quincy Adams, Niles' Register, vol. xxvi. p. 251.

Nothing could excite greater alarm and opposition at the South than such sentiments as these. Their adoption would be nothing less than a government of the majority, which might know no other law than the promotion of its real or fancied welfare.

term, taught a lesson which was only too well heeded; which was, to form a party based upon Southern ideas, which could undergo no change so long as their chief institution remained. Never, apparently, was there a firmer foundation upon which to build, and never a combination which promised to yield to both parties more satisfactory results. The South was content, as a means of preserving slavery, with the construction. of the Constitution, and with the privilege of defining the nature of the general government. All this their Northern allies freely conceded, for the possession of the public patronage. "The South was to be secured by going with the South, and the North by party machinery," was a maxim in politics. which grew out of this combination for a partition of the government and its patronage. At the time of which we are speaking, "strict construction" was felt to be of far more importance to the South than in 1791. Time had only served to increase the differences between the two great sections of the country, two nations from the beginning. During the early part of Mr. Adams' administration took place the famous experiment on the Stockton and Darlington Railway, in England, the most important event in modern times, as it demonstrated the practicability of the use of steam as a locomotive power. The preceding half century had been greatly distinguished by the prodigious progress made in the useful arts. The North caught, in full measure, the spirit abroad in other lands, and welcomed the new helps which the inventive genius of the race had brought to its aid, many of which possessed a peculiar value in a country like their own. One great want was public highways, to give a value to the products of the soil. To encourage manufactures, protective tariffs were enacted. In all such measures to be undertaken by the general government, the South, which blindfolded labor in order to keep it in ignorance and contented with its lot, saw no advantage but to their rivals; who were to increase in numbers and strength at their cost, from the use of contrivances and methods for which they were to be taxed, but in the benefits resulting from which they could have little share. Hence the redoubled earnestness with which they pressed the doctrine of "strict construction," and the unconstitutionality of the Bank. The Northern wing of the party readily yielded to all demands in this direction, not only as the price of the

emoluments conceded to it, but from sheer incredulity as to the consequences. What were stern realities with one, were mere metaphysical abstractions with the other. What harm could come, reasoned the Northern wing, of the most extravagant popular harangues, or the extremest language in political addresses and resolutions? Every thing went on just as well after as before. The government continued in the orderly discharge of its wonted functions, although every attribute of power conflicting with the sovereignty of the States was denied it. The consequences were all the more fatal, the less they were perceived. Constant iteration begat in time a conviction, in both wings of the party, that the government was one without powers, unless it were those necessary to uphold and extend slavery; so that when the inevitable crisis came, those administering it denied to it the power of attempting to put down an armed insurrection aimed at its very life. The great majority at the North well knew that it had ceased to represent them and the better and higher sentiments of the nation; but how to attack and overthrow a party so intrenched in office, and so sustained by the precedents of the past, was for a long time a problem that seemed to defy solution. Foreigners, who could not see beneath the surface, inferred, and very properly, the manners of the nation from the brutalities practised at the national capital and in the halls of Congress; and its morals, from the chicanery and intrigue which, from the example set in the national politics, invaded and polluted the public service, not only of the Nation and States, but often of the most insignificant municipality. Along with all this demoralization went a mighty moral and material development; so that when the North seized the reins of the government, and when nothing was expected of it but incoherency and imbecility, the world was electrified by a display of intelligence and power which not only triumphed over the most formidable obstacles, but for the first time in its history placed the institutions of the country upon the basis not of force, but of right, scattering to the winds Jefferson's and Jackson's construction of the Constitution, by the overthrow of the very institution whose necessities gave it birth.

In vain did Congress, with all the most sagacious and patriotic of all parties, earnestly protest against the position taken

by the President, which appeared so wanton and ill-advised. Two men were then living, who of all others, were best fitted to counsel and guide the nation. These were Mr. Madison and Mr. Gallatin,- alike venerable for their age, but far more so for the eminent services that each had rendered to the nation. Next to Washington and Hamilton, no one contributed so much as Madison toward the formation of its government. Secretary of State for the whole period of Jefferson's administration, he was President for the eight succeeding years, discharging all the duties of his exalted station with singular disinterestedness and success. He earnestly opposed the first Bank, upon constitutional grounds. Its charter expired under his administration. He was witness of the terrible disasters which followed the refusal to extend it. As the only means of escaping from them, he recommended the creation of a new Bank, waiving his constitutional scruples as having been overruled by competent precedents of the past. The reasons for the change in his opinions were fully set out in a letter, designed for publication, in reply to General Jackson's attack, in which he said:

"The charge of inconsistency between my objection to the constitutionality of such a Bank in 1791 and my assent in 1817 turns on the question, how far legislative precedents, expounding the Constitution, ought to guide succeeding legislatures, and to overrule individual opinions.

"Some obscurity has been thrown over the question, by confounding it with the respect due from one legislature to laws passed by preceding legislatures. But the two cases are essentially different. A constitution, being derived from a superior authority, is to be expounded and obeyed, not controlled or varied, by the subordinate authority of a legislature. A law, on the other hand, resting on no higher authority than that possessed by every successive legislature, its expediency as well as its meaning is within the scope of the latter.

"The case in question has its true analogy in the obligations arising from judicial expositions of the law on succeeding judges; the constitution being a law to the legislator, as the law is a rule of decision to the judge.

"And why are judicial precedents, when formed on due discussion and deliberately sanctioned by reviews and repetitions, regarded as of binding influence, or rather of authoritative force, in settling the meaning of a law? It must be answered, 1st, Because it is a reasonable and established axiom, that the good of society requires that the rules of conduct of its members should be certain and known, which would not be the case if any judge,