Properly regarded under such a policy,
every diminution of the public burdens arising from taxation gives to
individual enterprise increased power and furnishes to all the members
of our happy Confederacy new motives for patriotic affection and
support. But above all, its most important effect will be found in its
influence upon the character of the Government by confining its action
to those objects which will be sure to secure to it the attachment and
support of our fellow-citizens.
Circumstances make it my duty to call the attention of Congress to
the Bank of the United States. Created for the convenience of the
Government, that institution has become the scourge of the people. Its
interference to postpone the payment of a portion of the national debt
that it might retain the public money appropriated for that purpose to
strengthen it in a political contest, the extraordinary extension and
contraction of its accommodations to the community, its corrupt and
partisan loans, its exclusion of the public directors from a knowledge
of its most important proceedings, the unlimited authority conferred on
the president to expend its funds in hiring writers and procuring the
execution of printing, and the use made of that authority, the retention
of the pension money and books after the selection of new agents, the
groundless claim to heavy damages in consequence of the protest of the
bill drawn on the French Government, have through various channels been
laid before Congress.
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