The Bank had finally justified the brightest predictions of its friends. Everywhere in the country its notes were as good as gold, while abroad they were often above par.[1409] Its stock was owned in every nation and widely distributed in America.[1410] Up to the time when Jackson began his warfare upon the Bank, the financial management of Nicholas Biddle had been as brilliant as it was sound.[1411]
But popular hostility to the Bank had never ceased. In addition to the old animosity toward any central institution of finance, charges were made that directors of certain branches of the Bank had used their power to interfere in politics. As implacable as they were unjust were the assaults made by Democratic politicians upon Jeremiah Mason, director of the branch at Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Had the Bank consented to Mason's removal, it is possible that Jackson's warfare on it would not have been prosecuted.[1412]
The Bank's charter was to expire in 1836. In his first annual Message to Congress the President briefly called attention to the question of rechartering the institution. The constitutionality of the Bank Act was doubtful at best, he intimated, and the Bank certainly had not established a sound and uniform currency.[1413] In his next Message, a year later, Jackson repeated more strongly his attack upon the Bank.[1414]
Two years afterwards, on the eve of the Presidential campaign of 1832, the friends of the Bank in Congress passed, by heavy majorities, a bill extending the charter for fifteen years after March 3, 1836, the date of its expiration.[1415] The principal supporters of this measure were Clay and Webster and, indeed, most of the weighty men in the National Legislature. But they were enemies of Jackson, and he looked upon the rechartering of the Bank as a personal affront.
On July 4, 1832, the bill was sent to the President. Six days later he returned it with his veto. Jackson's veto message was as able as it was cunning. Parts of it were demagogic appeals to popular passion; but the heart of it was an attack upon Marshall's opinions in M'Culloch vs. Maryland and Osborn vs. The Bank.
The Bank is a monopoly, its stockholders and directors a "privileged order"; worse still, the institution is rapidly passing into the hands of aliens—"already is almost a third of the stock in foreign hands." If we must have a bank, let it be "purely American." This aristocratic, monopolistic, un-American concern exists by the authority of an unconstitutional act of Congress. Even worse is the rechartering act which he now vetoed.
The decision of the Supreme Court in the Bank cases, settled nothing, said Jackson. Marshall's opinions were, for the most part, erroneous and "ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of this Government. The Congress, the Executive, and the Court must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution.... It is as much the duty of the House of Representatives, of the Senate, and of the President to decide upon the constitutionality of any bill or resolution which may be presented to them for passage or approval as it is of the supreme judges when it may be brought before them for judicial decision.
"The opinion of the judges has no more authority over Congress than the opinion of Congress has over the judges, and on that point the President is independent of both. The authority of the Supreme Court must not, therefore, be permitted to control the Congress or the Executive when acting in their legislative capacities, but to have only such influence as the force of their reasoning may deserve."[1416]
But, says Jackson, the court did not decide that "all features of this corporation are compatible with the Constitution." He quotes—and puts in italics—Marshall's statement that "where the law is not prohibited and is really calculated to effect any of the objects intrusted to the Government, to undertake here to inquire into the degree of its necessity would be to pass the line which circumscribes the judicial department and to tread on legislative ground." This language, insists Jackson, means that "it is the exclusive province of Congress and the President to decide whether the particular features of this act are necessary and proper ... and therefore constitutional, or unnecessary and improper, and therefore unconstitutional."[1417] Thereupon Jackson points out what he considers to be the defects of the bill.
Congress has no power to "grant exclusive privileges or monopolies," except in the District of Columbia and in the matter of patents and copyrights. "Every act of Congress, therefore, which attempts, by grants of monopolies or sale of exclusive privileges for a limited time, or a time without limit, to restrict or extinguish its own discretion in the choice of means to execute its delegated powers, is equivalent to a legislative amendment of the Constitution, and palpably unconstitutional."[1418] Jackson fiercely attacks Marshall's opinion that the States cannot tax the National Bank and its branches.