Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/76

 the Constitution had given to the Union. The conception of a federal State was passionately hated and resisted by a majority of the people. They felt the discipline, order, method and punctuality of the great empire as an irksome restriction on the loose and shiftless habits of former times which they called liberty. It was true that there was such an advancing constraint. The Bank, by its symbolism, and by its functions, was the only great institution which was helping on the work of social and political integration. That was exactly the reason why it was hated by the State rights men and anti-federalists.

Testimony to this action of the Bank was given in the debate. "I ask the question: Will a bank in North Carolina trust a bank in New Hampshire? No! but the State and every individual in it would trust the Bank of the United States. You could not establish a connection between North Carolina and New Hampshire, so that either would trust the other. The establishment of the Bank of the United States affords, in this case, a facility useful and absolutely necessary to carry on the measures of the government." It had a corresponding effect on commercial affairs. Before 1800 the collectors at the different ports kept the duty bonds in their own custody. After that time, by a new law, the bonds were deposited in the Bank for collection. They thus became bank debts, and although, as Smith of Maryland argued, trying to break the force of this fact, the coercion to pay was not in the Bank but in the custom house, nevertheless, in practice, it was the Bank usage which set the standard. Crawford said: "It is impossible to resist the conviction that the prompt and secure collection of our revenue is principally owing to the influence of the Bank." These facts, however, furnish the reasons why the Bank was hated by large classes of business men and politicians. The republicans felt sure that it never would be an ally of theirs, and therefore they thought it the simplest dictate of political policy to destroy it while they could. In vain the fact was pointed out to them that the federalists, although they had, as the opponents said, had this tremendous engine in their hands for twenty years, had been ousted by the opponents, and that the only three out and out federal States, besides Massachusetts, had no branch of the Bank, while the States in which there were branches, with the same exception, were either wholly or in large part republican.

In the House of Representatives the renewal of the charter was indefinitely postponed January 24, 1811, by a vote of 65 to 64. In the Senate it was lost by the casting vote of the Vice-President, George Clinton, February 20th.

After the re-charter was defeated, the Bank asked for an extension of the powers requisite for winding up. This was refused. In a report on it by Clay, to the Senate, it was said: "The injurious effects of a dissolution of the corporation will be found to consist in an accelerated disclosure of the