Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/217

 Biddle had visited the Buffalo and Portsmouth branches during the summer. September 15, he wrote again to Ingham. He says that two memorials have been sent to him by Isaac Hill, Second Comptroller of the Treasury, one from the business men of Portsmouth, and the other from sixty members of the Legislature of New Hampshire, requesting Mason's removal, and nominating a new board of directors, "friends of General Jackson in New Hampshire." There is a co-ordination about these numerous petty attacks which makes them look as if they had been planned by the clique at Washington which was hostile to the Bank. If the purpose was to sting Biddle into imprudence, they met with complete success. The tone of his letter is sharp and independent. Ingham had not formulated any definite statements of fact or opinion. He had dealt in inuendo. Biddle formulated the issues which, as he perceived, lurked in the inuendo. He denies that public opinion in the community around a bank is any test of bank management, and declares that the reported opinion at Portsmouth upon examination "degenerated into the personal hostility of a very limited and for the most part very prejudiced circle." He then takes up three points which he finds suggested in Ingham's letters: first, that the Secretary, by virtue of the relations of the government to the Bank, has some supervision over the choice of officers of the Bank; second, that there is some action of the government on the Bank, which is not precisely defined, but of which the Secretary is the proper agent; third, that it is the right and duty of the Secretary to make known to the president of the Bank the views of the administration on the political opinions of the officers of the Bank. To these points he rejoined that the board of directors of the Bank acknowledge no responsibility whatever to the Secretary, in regard to the political opinions of the officers of the Bank; that the Bank is responsible to Congress only, and is carefully shielded by its charter from executive control. He indignantly denies that freedom from political bias is impossible; shows the folly of the notion of political "checks and counter-balances" between the officers of the Bank, and declares that the Bank ought to disregard all parties. He would have won a complete victory on the argument of his points, if he had been before an impartial tribunal, but he stung Ingham's vanity, and on the main issue he delivered himself into the hands of his enemies.

"It never occurred to me," says Ingham, in his apology of 1832, "that these [my] friendly intentions could be so misunderstood, or my expressions so perverted and misrepresented, as they were found to be in Mr. Biddle's letter of the 15 September." He calls Biddle's denial that the Bank ever made or withheld a loan for political reasons "too confident if not presumptuous;" and laments that his own "motives were misunderstood and his friendly purposes wholly disappointed." Instead of being furnished with a triumphant answer with which to defeat the enemies of the Bank, he found himself forced to defend himself from the charge of trying to "seduce" the Bank into political relations with the administration; hence his letter of October 5th.