Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/74

62 to him. In the debate on the West Florida question he was decidedly the most conspicuous and important figure; and when the veteran Timothy Pickering, in a speech in reply to Clay, quoted a document which years before had been communicated to the Senate in confidence, it was the young Kentuckian who promptly stepped forward as the leader of the majority, offering a resolution to censure Pickering for having committed a breach of the rules, and the majority obediently followed.

From this debate he came forth the most striking embodiment of the rising spirit of Young America. But the manner in which he opposed the re-charter of the Bank of the United States was calculated to bring serious embarrassment upon him in his subsequent career; for he furnished arguments to his bitterest enemy. The first Bank of the United States was chartered by Congress in 1791, the charter to run for twenty years. Its establishment formed an important part of Hamilton's scheme of national finance. It was to aid in the collection of the revenue; to secure to the country a safe and uniform currency; to serve as a trustworthy depository of public funds; to facilitate the transmission of money from one part of the country to another; to assist the government in making loans, funding bond issues, and other financial operations. These offices it had on the whole so well performed that the Secretary of the Treasury, Gallatin, although belonging to the political school which had originally opposed the