[454] "It is true, that a branch of the Bank of the United States ... is established at Norfolk; and that a branch of the Bank of Virginia is also established there. But these circumstances furnish no possible motive of avarice to the Virginia Legislature.... They have acted ... from the purest and most honorable motives." (Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 200.)
[455] Pitkin, 421.
[456] The "newspapers teem with the most virulent abuse." (James Flint's Letters from America, in Early Western Travels: Thwaites, ix, 87.) Even twenty years later Captain Marryat records: "The press in the United States is licentious to the highest possible degree, and defies control.... Every man in America reads his newspaper, and hardly any thing else." (Marryat: Diary in America, 2d Series, 56-59.)
[457] "The Democratic presses ... have ... teemed with the most scurrilous abuse against every member of Congress who has dared to utter a syllable in favor of the renewal of the bank charter." Any member supporting the bank "is instantly charged with being bribed, ... with being corrupt, with having trampled upon the rights and liberties of the people, ... with being guilty of perjury."
According to "the rantings of our Democratic editors ... and the denunciations of our public declaimers," the bank "exists under the form of every foul and hateful beast and bird, and creeping thing. It is an Hydra; it is a Cerberus; it is a Gorgon; it is a Vulture; it is a Viper....
"Shall we tamely act under the lash of this tyranny of the press?... I most solemnly protest.... To tyranny, under whatever form it may be exercised, I declare open and interminable war ... whether the tyrant is an irresponsible editor or a despotic Monarch." (Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 145.)
[458] Annals, 11th Cong. 3d Sess. 826.
[459] Ib. 347.
[460] Pitkin, 430.
[461] Adams to Rush, Dec. 27, 1810, Old Family Letters, 272.