By means of principles
which he has introduced, and innovations which he has made in our
institutions, alas! but too much countenanced by Congress and a
confiding people, he exercises, uncontrolled, the power of the State.
In one hand he holds the purse, and in the other brandishes the sword
of the country. Myriads of dependants and partisans, scattered over
the land, are ever ready to sing hosannas to him, and to laud to the
skies whatever he does. He has swept over the government, during the
last eight years, like a tropical tornado. Every department exhibits
traces of the ravages of the storm. Take as one example the Bank of
the United States. No institution could have been more popular with
the people, with Congress, and with State Legislatures. None ever
better fulfilled the great purposes of its establishment. But it
unfortunately incurred the displeasure of the President; he spoke, and
the bank lies prostrate. And those who were loudest in its praise are
now loudest in its condemnation. What object of his ambition is
unsatisfied? When disabled from age any longer to hold the sceptre
of power, he designates his successor, and transmits it to his favorite!
What more does he want? Must we blot, deface, and mutilate the
records of the country, to punish the presumptuousness of expressing
an opinion contrary to his own?
What patriotic purpose is to be accomplished by this Expunging
resolution? Can you make that not to be which has been? Can you
eradicate from memory and from history the fact that in March, 1834,
a majority of the Senate of the United States passed the resolution
which excites your enmity? Is it your vain and wicked object to
arrogate to yourselves that power of annihilating the past which has
been denied to Omnipotence itself? Do you intend to thrust your
hands into our hearts, and to pluck out the deeply rooted convictions
which are there? Or is it your design merely to stigmatize us? You
cannot stigmatize us.
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