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210 unsafe and politically dangerous. Something like this idea was probably in Clay's mind when, before the election of 1840, he declared that a United States Bank should not again be incorporated unless emphatically demanded by a majority of the people. In that case it was all the more unstatesmanlike to assume in 1841 that a majority did demand it, and to forget that a strong and determined minority would ordinarily be sufficient to endanger the credit and stability of a financial institution. The only excuse the Whig statesmen of that period had for thinking at all of the establishment of a new United States Bank was that they knew of no other means to secure to the country a well regulated currency of uniform value. Even that was hardly an excuse, for, under the circumstances then existing, an uncertain bank experiment would only have produced new commotions and disorders. It is a significant fact that, after Tyler's bank vetoes, the scheme of a great United States Bank never regained vitality, and that the Whig party itself treated it in subsequent campaigns as an “obsolete idea.”

Tyler would have rendered another service to the country had he put his veto upon another of Clay's measures, — the distribution of the proceeds of the public land sales, which at the extra session of 1841 passed both houses, and became a law on September 4. This time Clay had pressed his bill especially on the ground that many of the states were grievously in debt, and that the distribution