and "is to be construed according to the subject and object of the trust." The objects are the safe keeping of the money, and its transfer from place to place; and if the Bank fails in either of these objects, the deposits should be removed; but otherwise, they should remain in the Bank. Of its other acts, in discounting too little or too much, if its committees are not properly organized, if it demands damages on protested bills, or it meddle in politics, the opinion of the Secretary, that he has a right to withdraw from it the custody of the public money, is inconsistent with the purpose of the Legislature, and would give him the power of removal even for believing that a bank is unconstitutional, or upon the utility of continuing it until its charter expires. He may even exercise his power on any supposed ground of public good.

The extent of the Secretary's power being thus ascertained, the Committee proceed to examine the reason he assigns for the removal of the deposits.

The first is, the near approach to the termination of the Bank charter, the fourth of March, 1836. As three sessions of Congress intervene, he should have left this matter to Congress. They had acted on the subject at the last session, and a new session was at hand. He assigns no reason or emergency for not awaiting the meeting of Congress.

The Secretary infers that the Bank charter would not be renewed, from the recent popular elections. But on this subject men may draw different conclusions: one may think a candidate has been elected from his opposition to the Bank; and another, that he has been chosen. notwithstanding such opposition; and another may suppose it has produced little or no effect.

But if the inference were fair and allowable, it did

not follow that the deposits should be removed before Congress had decided on the hands into which they should be transferred.

The withdrawal of the money on deposit from a bank whose charter is about to expire, is one of the things longest postponed. The operation, by being made gradual, produces the least disturbance to the community; and the course pursued as to the first Bank of the United States is referred to. A part of the public money remained in the Bank even after the charter had expired. The withdrawal was unnecessarily early, and unnecessarily sudden.

The Committee examine the acts of misconduct alleged against the Bank.

That the discounts are made by a committee, and not by a quorum of the Board.

Supposing this illegal or irregular, how is the error to be corrected by removing the deposits? The Committee, however, believe the practice not unusual. It is important to make discounts oftener than it is convenient for the Board of Directors to meet. It is sufficient if they have a general supervisory power.

But the Government Directors were not on this committee.

But if the appointment of a committee was illegal, it could not be rendered legal by appointing any or all these Directors. There seems to be no ground for the suspicion that there was a special motive for their exclusion. All these discounts are matters of record, and to be seen by all the Directors every day. There might have been good reasons for their exclusion. Their services might have been more useful on committees, or they might not have been so well acquainted with the business of foreign or domestic exchange.

The Committee do not agree with the Secretary in attributing any peculiar duty, trust, or authority, to these Directors, to distinguish them from the rest of the Board.

The charge against the Bank, that the measures of the committee of exchange are systematically concealed from the officers of the Government, is a serious one, but the Committee say they find nothing to justify it.

The question of the right to damages on the protested French bill is examined; and the Bank is, in the Committee's opinion, justified in demanding them; and, whether right or wrong, it furnishes no reason for withdrawing the deposits.

The charge that the Bank has used its means to obtain political power, they also think, if true, offers no ground for the removal.

They examine into the facts relied on by the Secretary. The first is, the extension of its loans in 1831. But this was not complained of then: so as to the extension in May, 1832: which were well known at the time.

The Directors charged with misconduct have a right to defend themselves before the community; and the Secretary is not constituted the judge of their mode of exercising this right, and cannot justly remove the deposits because he does not approve of the course of the Bank. The Committee regard this last reason as more objectionable than any other, as it would leave a high official duty to be exercised from considerations connected with the political feelings and party contests of the day.

The Committee have no doubt that the removal of the deposits is the cause of the existing public distress. In taking care of itself, the Bank would necessarily les

sen its loans and accommodations, by having nine millions suddenly withdrawn from it. "The extraordinary spectacle is exhibited of a warfare by the National Government on the National Bank, notwithstanding that the Government is itself a great proprietor in the Bank, and that the notes of the Bank are the currency in which the revenues are receivable. The true and natural relation between the Government and the Bank are thus reversed. They show that the State banks are not able to maintain as large a circulation with nine millions as the National Bank maintained.

Besides lessening circulation, and lowering prices, the removal has acted on public opinion, and disturbed the general confidence, has weakened the public faith, and given alarm for the security of property. They regard the measure as highly inexpedient, and altogether unjus tifiable. The Committee forbear to consider the measures adopted by the Secretary for the safe keeping of the public money since the withdrawal from the Bank, or the course of legislation proper in the existing state of things. They recommend the adoption of the resolution referred to them, that the reasons assigned by the Secretary of the Treasury for the removal "are insufficient and unsatisfactory."

Mr. Sprague, one of the Senators from Maine, on the second of January offered a resolution that the Secretary of the Treasury communicate the amount of trade between the United States and the British American colonies, the British West Indies, the Danish West Indies, and the Swedish West Indies, since the thirtieth of September, 1832; distinguishing the American, British and other foreign tonnage: also the amount of imports and exports, distinguished in like manner.

The next day, he said that his motive was to see the

effect of the arrangement negotiated by Mr. M'Lane. He made statements to show that, before the arrangement, the foreign tonnage employed in this trade, which was less than one-tenth, had, under that arrangement, exceeded the American. The resolution was adopted.

The Bank issued a paper in its own vindication, in answer to the charges against it by the President and the Secretary of the Treasury, and the paper signed by the Government Directors.

Some of the facts are denied: thus, as to the expenditure for printing; of the eighty thousand dollars said to have been expended for documents and pamphlets to operate on public opinion, more than thirty-three thousand dollars were for printing notes and for circulation, and this money was not expended in Philadelphia alone, but in the Bank and all the branches together. They also urge the increase of the loans made from 1831 to 1832, instead of being twenty-eight millions, as is stated, was only seventeen millions.

The Bank committee undertake to account for the hostility of the Executive towards that institution, by the attempt made by the Treasury Department to have Mr. Jeremiah Mason removed from the office of President of the Branch Bank in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, on account of his political sentiments, and the suggestion made by Mr. Woodbury (now a member of the Cabinet) that his removal would tend to reconcile the people of New Hampshire to the Bank. This proposition not being acceded to by the Directors of the Bank, on the ground that they had no responsibility to the Secretary of the Treasury touching the political conduct of their officers. Thus arose the hostility to the Bank, of those who, "finding it impossible to bend it to their purposes, have resolved to break it."