Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/367

Rh elaborate argument in favor of the United States Bank. There is much reason for believing that Jackson at that period was inclined to accept some accommodation or compromise concerning the bank question, or at least not to force a fight just then. Thurlow Weed, in his “Autobiography,” gives an account of a conference between the Secretary of the Treasury and the president of the bank, in which the assent of the administration to the recharter was offered on condition of certain modifications of the charter. It is further reported that the officers of the bank were strongly in favor of accepting the proposition, but that, when they consulted Clay and Webster on the matter, they found determined resistance, to which they yielded.

The officers and the most discreet friends of the United States Bank felt keenly that a great financial institution, whose operations and interests were closely interwoven with the general business of the country, should not become identified with a political party in all the vicissitudes of fortune, and should never permit itself to be made the football of political ambitions. They were strongly inclined not to press the rechartering of the bank until it should be necessary, and thus to keep the question out of the presidential campaign.

Clay thought otherwise. As to the time when the renewal of the charter should be asked for, he maintained that the present time was the best. There were undoubted majorities favorable to the bank in both houses. If the President should de-