The third object to which the President addressed himself in the message was to call the attention of the poor to the proposition that the Government was favoring the rich through the Bank. The President called the Bank a monopoly, which means privilege conferred by Government on a few at the expense of the many. He calculated that the privilege to be granted to the existing stockholders by the re-charter of the Bank was worth seventeen millions of dollars, while the bonus which they would be required to pay was but three millions. Fourteen millions of dollars would thus be presented by the Government to the Bank, which sum the Government must take by taxation from the people. He arrived at these statistics and results by assuming that the Bank stock, after the re-charter and in consequence of it, would be worth about one hundred and fifty dollars for one hundred par, that some other body of stockholders could be found who would pay seventeen millions for the charter, and that the money thus acquired from the supposed stockholders by the Government would effect the remission of just so much taxation upon the people. The President saw also, with Senator Benton, that the use of the Government deposits by the Bank was a source of income to the stockholders at the popular expense. And he denounced the feature in the new bill, which allowed the Commonwealth banks to pay their indebtedness to any branch of the United States Bank with the notes of any other branch, but did not accord the same privilege to individuals, as favoring the rich and powerful against the poor and weak.
The entire argumentation in this part of the message seems extravagant and exaggerated, to say the least, but it sounded convincing and sympathetic to the masses. It was something which brought the question home to each one of them, and made it appear related to each one's personal interest. The statement was a powerful vote-catcher. It took wonderfully.
| Structure and powers of the Bank. |
The fourth proposition, as we have arranged them, was the criticism on the structure and powers of the Bank provided in the new bill. The President objected to the unnecessarily large amount of the capital stock, to the right to be given the Bank to locate its own branches, to the power of the Government, as a stockholder, to own real estate for general purposes, and to the power of the Bank to coin money, as he called the power to issue its notes.
| Jackson on executive independence. |
The final division of the message, according to our arrangement, contains the disquisition upon the relation of the departments of the Government to each other in operating the Constitution, and the relation of the general Government to the Commonwealths in regard to jurisdiction over the business of banking. The President held, upon the first of these points, that "if the opinion of the Supreme Court," in the case of McCulloch and Maryland, "covered the whole ground of this act, it ought not to control the co-ordinate authorities of the Government." "The Congress, the Executive, and the Court," he said, "must each for itself be guided by its own opinion of the Constitution. Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others. 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 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."
The President also said that he could have furnished a plan for a bank, had it been requested of him, which would have been equal to all the duties required by the Government, a plan which might have been enacted by Congress without straining or overstepping its powers, and without infringing the powers of the Commonwealths; and he complained that the Bank, as an agent of the Executive Department, should be thrust upon the Department without the Department being consulted as to whether it needed or wanted any such agent.