The concluding part of this paragraph, in which the new President declares that, in looking to the constitutionality and expediency of a national bank, he should look for advice and instruction to the example of the fathers of the Republic, he was understood as declaring that he would not be governed by his own former opinions against a national bank, but by the example of Washington, a signer of the constitution (who signed the charter of the first national bank); and by the example of Mr. Madison, another signer of the constitution, who, yielding to precedent and the authority of judicial decisions, had signed the charter for the second bank, notwithstanding his early constitutional objections to it. In other parts of the paragraph he was considered as declaring in favor of the late United States Bank, as in the previous part of the paragraph where he used the phrases which had become catch-words in the long contest with that bank—"war upon the currency"—"sound circulating medium"—"restoration of national prosperity;" &c., &c. He was understood to express a preference for the re-charter of that institution. And this impression was well confirmed by other circumstances—his zealous report in favor of that bank when acting as volunteer chairman to the Senate's committee which was sent to examine it—his standing a canvass in a presidential election in which the re-charter of that bank, though concertedly blinked in some parts of the Union, was the understood vital issue every where—his publicly avowed preference for its notes over gold, at Wheeling, Virginia—the retention of a cabinet, pledged to that bank, with expressions of confidence in them, and in terms that promised a four years' service together—and his utter condemnation in other parts of his inaugural and in all his public speeches, of every other plan (sub-treasury, state banks, revival of the gold currency), which had been presented as remedies for the financial and currency disorders. All these circumstances and declarations left no doubt that he was not only in favor of a national bank, but of re-chartering the late one; and that he looked to it, and to it alone, for the "sound circulating medium" which he preferred to the constitutional currency—for the keeping of those deposits which he had condemned Jackson for removing from it—and for the restoration of that national prosperity, which the imputed war upon the bank had destroyed.
[CHAPTER LXII.]
TWENTY-SEVENTH CONGRESS: FIRST SESSION: LIST OF MEMBERS, AND ORGANIZATION OF THE HOUSE.
Members of the Senate.
Maine.—Reuel Williams, George Evans.
New Hampshire.—Franklin Pierce, Levi Woodbury.
Vermont.—Samuel Prentis, Samuel Phelps.
Massachusetts.—Rufus Choate, Isaac C. Bates.
Rhode Island.—Nathan F. Dixon, James F. Simmons.