In guarding against an evil of such magnitude considerations of
temporary convenience should be thrown out of the question, and we
should be influenced by such motives only as look to the honor and
preservation of the republican system. Deeply and solemnly impressed
with the justice of these views, I feel it to be my duty to recommend to
you that a law be passed authorizing the sale of the public stock: that
the provision of the charter requiring the receipt of notes of the bank
in payment of public dues shall, in accordance with the power reserved
to Congress in the fourteenth section of the charter, be suspended until
the bank pays to the Treasury the dividends withheld, and that all laws
connecting the Government or its officers with the bank, directly or
indirectly, be repealed, and that the institution be left hereafter
to its own resources and means.
Events have satisfied my mind, and I think the minds of the American
people, that the mischiefs and dangers which flow from a national bank
far overbalance all its advantages. The bold effort the present bank has
made to control the Government, the distresses it has wantonly produced,
the violence of which it has been the occasion in one of our cities
famed for its observance of law and order, are but premonitions of the
fate which awaits the American people should they be deluded into a
perpetuation of this institution or the establishment of another like
it.
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