"I have an innate and mortal aversion to reading," returned Fog.
"It must be gone through," said Flan Sucker,—"because them sentiments is the rale Dimmocracy, and we want to hear them. So, go it, The!—Yip—listen boys, to the doctrine."
"Well," said Fog, "if you will have it—as the pillory said to the thief, 'lend me your ears.'"
"I thank the Secretary," he began with a discreet voice, reading where Mr. Grant appointed for him, "for the disclosure of this plan. I trust in God it will be defeated: that the Bank of the United States, while it is in existence, may be sustained and strengthened by the public opinion, and interests of the people, to defeat it: that the sound and sober State banks of the Union may resist it—for it is their cause: that the poor men and laborers in the land may resist it—for it is a scheme to get from every one of them a dollar's worth of labor for fifty cents, and to make fraud the currency of the country as much as paper. Sir, the Bank of the United States, in any other relation than to the currency and property of the country, is as little to me as to any man under heaven; but after the prime and vigor of life are passed, and the power of accumulation is gone, to see the children stripped, by the monstrous imposture of a paper currency, of all that the father's industry had provided for them—this, sir, may well excuse the warmth that denounces this plan, as the precursor of universal dismay and ruin."
"I'll read no more," said Fog, giving back the book, with a theatrical flourish of his arm, to Mr. Grant; "it is nothing more than stealing our principles from us, and then bringing them up to break our heads."
"It is good Whig prophecy, four years before its fulfillment," said Mr. Grant, "and which has come true to the letter. It shows you that we set our faces against your increase of banks in the very beginning; gave you warning of what was to come; painted the very evils of this day so plainly before your eyes that nothing but willful blindness prevented you from seeing them; and now, when it has all fallen out as it was foretold, you attempt to make us responsible to the people for your measures."
"Sir," said Fog, rather evading the argument, as it is an admirable part of the New-Light system to do when it pinches, "the New-Light Democracy changes its measures, but never its principles. We go, sir, for the will of the people—that's the principle which lies at the bottom of all our actions. If the people are for new measures, we frankly come out with them. Now, sir, the people are against the banks—they are for the Independent Treasury: of course, then, you know where to find us. You can't get round us—there we are."
"I'll not dispute that point with you," replied Mr. Grant; "you have been changing from bad to worse ever since you have had the control of affairs. I only wanted to remind you that the present distress of the country is the work of your own hands, and that you have brought it about with your eyes open."
Saying these words Mr. Grant walked off toward the stable, where he mounted his horse and rode out of the Borough.