Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 1).djvu/76

64 out difficulty he refuted the charges with which it was assailed. But his very solicitude told against the measure he advocated. A very influential coterie, represented in the Cabinet by the Secretary of the Navy, Smith, and especially strong in the Senate, entertained a deadly hostility to the Secretary of the Treasury, and sought to drive him out of the administration by defeating everything he thought important to his success as a public financier. There is no reason to suspect that Clay was a party to this political intrigue. Nevertheless, he espoused the anti-Bank cause with the whole fervor of his nature. One reason was that the legislature of his state had instructed him to do so. But he did not rest his opposition upon that ground. He sincerely believed in many of the accusations that had been brought against the Bank; to his imagination it appeared as the embodiment of a great money power that might become dangerous to free institutions. But his principal objection was the unconstitutionality of the Bank, and this he urged with arguments drawn so deeply from his conception of the nature of the federal government, and in language so emphatic, as to make it seem impossible for him ever to escape from the principles then laid down.

“What is the nature of this government? (he said.) It is emphatically federal, vested with an aggregate of specified powers for general purposes, conceded by existing sovereignties, who have themselves retained what is not so conceded. It is said there are cases in which