Creature From Jekyll Island by G. Edward полностью

With the ability to control the flow of the nation's credit, Biddle soon became one of the most powerful men in America. This was brought out dramatically when he was asked by a Senate Committee if his bank ever took advantage of its superior position over the state banks. He replied: "Never. There are very few banks which might not have been destroyed by an exertion of the powers of the Bank. None has ever been injured."1 As Jackson publicly noted a few months later, this was an admission that most of the state banks existed only at the pleasure of the Bank of the United States, and that, of course, meant at the pleasure of Mr. Biddle.

The year was 1832. The Bank's charter was good for another four years. But Biddle decided not to wait that long for Jackson to build his forces. He knew that the President was up for reelection, and he reasoned that, as a candidate, he would hesitate to be too controversial. To criticize the Bank is one thing, but to come down squarely for its elimination altogether would surely cost him many votes. So, Biddle requested Congress to grant an early renewal of the charter as a means of softening Jackson's campaign against it.

The bill was backed by the Republicans led by Senator John Clay and was passed into law on July 3, just before the election campaigns began in earnest.

JACKSON OVERRIDES CONGRESS

It was brilliant strategy on Biddle's part but it didn't work.

Jackson decided to place his entire political career on the line for this one issue and, with perhaps the most passionate message ever delivered to Congress by any President, before or since, he vetoed the measure. The President's biographer, Robert Remini, says: "The veto message hit the nation like a tornado. For it not only cited constitutional arguments against recharter—supposedly the only reason for resorting to a veto—but political, social, economic, and nationalistic reasons as well."2

Jackson devoted most of his veto message to three general topics: (1) the injustice that is inherent in granting a government-1. J.D. Richardson, A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents, 1789-1908 (Washington: Bureau of National Literature and Art, 1908), Vol. II, p. 581.

2. Robert V. Remini, The Life of Andrew Jackson (New York: Harper & Row, 1988), pp. 227-28.

A DEN OF VIPERS

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sponsored monopoly to the Bank; (2) the unconstitutionality of the Bank even if it were not unjust; and (3) the danger to the country in having the Bank heavily dominated by foreign investors.

Regarding the injustice of a government-sponsored monopoly, he pointed out that the stock of the Bank was owned only by the richest citizens of the country and that, since the sale of stock was limited to a chosen few with political influence, the common man, not only is unfairly excluded from an opportunity to participate, but he is forced to pay for his banking services far more than they are worth. Unearned profits are bad enough when they are taken from one class of citizens and given to another, but it is even worse when the people receiving those benefits are not even citizens at all but are, in fact foreigners. Jackson said:

It is not our own citizens only who are to receive the bounty of our Government. More than eight millions of the stock of this bank are held by foreigners. By this act the American Republic proposes virtually to make them a present of some millions of dollars.... It appears that more than a fourth part of the stock is held by foreigners and the residue is held by a few hundred of our own citizens, chiefly of the richest class. For their benefit does this act exclude the whole American people from competition in the purchase of this monopoly and dispose of it for many millions less than it is worth.1

Regarding the issue of constitutionality, he said that he was not bound by the previous decision of the Supreme Court, because the President and Congress had just as much right to decide for themselves whether or not a particular law is constitutional. This view, incidentally, was not novel at that time. It is only in relatively recent decades that people have begun to think of the Supreme Court as being specifically authorized to pass on this question. In fact, as Jackson correctly pointed out in his veto message, the founding fathers created a government with power divided between the executive, legislative, and judicial branches, and that the purpose of this division was, not merely to divvy up the chores, but to balance one branch against the other. The goal was not to make government efficient but to deliberately make it inefficient. Each President and each legislator is morally bound, even by oath, to uphold the Constitution. If each of them does not have the power to 1. Krooss, pp. 22-23.

350 THE CREATURE FROM JEKYLL ISLAND