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202 he had no matured plans. The repeal of the sub-treasury law he looked upon as inevitable. The “relief of the treasury” might call for “additional burdens.” The state of the military defenses, he thought, “required immediate attention.” If Congress attended only to these subjects, great good would be done. But Congress would have to decide whether other measures should claim its attention. He favored the distribution of the proceeds of public land sales only if the annual appropriations for rivers and harbors were abandoned. As to the establishment of a United States Bank, he gave several good reasons — not calculated, however, to convince Clay's mind — why it should not be urged. He asked Clay to consider whether he could not “so frame a bank as to obviate all constitutional objections.” But he would leave Congress “to its own action,” and in the end resolve his doubts, if he entertained any, “by the character of the measure proposed.”

With regard to the bank question, this had a decidedly uncertain sound. The message which Tyler addressed on June 1, 1841, to Congress assembled in extra session, was no clearer. It spoke encouragingly of the distribution of the proceeds of land sales, which were to aid the states in paying their debts, provided, however, they did not oblige Congress to increase tariff duties beyond the level fixed in the compromise of 1883. The President thought a “fiscal agent” desirable to facilitate the collection and disbursement of the