Richmond Enquirer

THE BANK BILL.

The Whigs are confident of the passage of the Bill through the Senate of Pennsylvania. We shall never believe it, until we see it—although we are satisfied, that the Bank will move Heaven and Earth, and Hell itself (Acheronta movebo) to secure a charter.

The Pennsylvanian still places its "reliance on the Senate of Pennsylvania. To the Democratic majority in that body we look for such conduct as will crush the monster monopoly, and defeat insidious treason. The people of the State are rallying round them to sustain and reward their intrepid efforts in behalf of the good cause. The voice of encouragement is ringing from every town, village and hamlet in the State, and it cannot be that it will not be obeyed."

The Philadelphia Democratic Herald gives us the following Letter from Harrisburg :

"The object of the Bank is, first, Fortunes for all concerned in the speculation—second, a revolution in the politics of the State, to the federal side—third, political power to operate on the Presidency of the United States! These are the objects of the Bank! Now, what are the consequences to the People? to this State? and to the United States? It would be idle in me to attempt to trace these consequences in a letter, but it must strike you, that such a system would lead directly either to entire and absolute slavery in the people—or to civil convulsions! All who know the people of this State and Union, will agree, that they will never fall into slavery. What then will be the result?—a social struggle—physical force will be resorted to—and a revolution will ensue. The Bank having the money power, will use it—and the people having physical power, will resist its might! What then will be the consequences? Will the bill pass? I think not. The Senate will poll a party vote against it!"

The stock has risen to 125 or 6, in consequence of the prospect of success. If it gets a charter, it may mount to 150 or more. The Philadelphia Sentinel contends, it ought to pay a higher bonus, because "the seven millions of additional stock will, the moment the bill passes, sell at an advance of at least three millions and a half of dollars."

The Baltimore Chronicle of Saturday last, says the "Bill was reported to the Senate of Pennsylvania on Thursday morning, by the Committee to whom it had been referred. The committee report an amendment to the bill, prohibiting the issue of notes by the Bank of a less denomination than ten dollars. It is probable that no action was had upon the bill in Senate on Thursday; but we presume it was taken up in that body yesterday, and doubtless, its fate will be known in a few days.—The opinion grows more and more confident that the Bank will obtain a charter."

This portentous Institution itself excites the most violent indignation in the Democracy of Pennsylvania.—The great Democratic Meeting of Harrisburg on the 1st inst., where, after a full hearing, the Resolutions were carried by more than 500 citizens against some 30 or 40, expressed among others the following sentiments:

"Resolved, That the application of the Bank of the United States to the Legislature of Pennsylvania, for a re-charter of its whole capital of $35,000,000, an amount which its friends have admitted to be amply sufficient for the wants of the whole Union, is one of the most high-handed insults to the good sense of the people, and one of the most glaring attempts to prostrate their liberty, that can be found in all the history of political profligacy and audacity.

"Resolved, That the hypocritical form of the bill reported in accordance with this application of the Bank, and the palpable effort to bribe the people of the different sections of the country into its support by the artful distribution of the proffered bonus, are causes of universal public indignation and alarm, and ought to arouse the people to an instant assertion and maintenance of their rights.

"Resolved, That the Legislature of Pennsylvania, even under the present constitution, has no right to enact any law which will be in its tendency injurious to the interests and dangerous to the liberties of the people—that such a law is unconstitutional and void—that any subsequent legislature may and are in duty bound to declare it so, and that we have confidence in the virtue of the people of Pennsylvania to believe, that should this bill pass, the next legislature will be one which will manfully perform this duty."

"Resolved, That any Democrat, who votes for this bill, is an apostate deserter from the principles of his party, from his duty, and from the welfare of his Country, who deserves to be flung into irretrievable obscurity and disgrace, as totally unworthy to be trusted by the people, who had elected them their Representatives.

"Resolved, That when the Bank of the United States has made application for a re-charter to bodies in which honest men and patriots held the ascendancy, it has ignobly failed in its attempts—and should it succeed now, the strong presumption will arise, that it was because these virtues were wanting in those who prejudged the question."

The Harrisburg Reporter declares, that "as might have been expected from a people ever watchful and jealous of their sacred rights, the news of the corrupting bill now before the Legislature, is universally received with the most indignant bursts of surprise and condemnation. But one sentiment of anger and alarm appears to pervade the Commonwealth upon the subject, from one extreme to the other. The proceedings of township, county, ward and city meetings, expressive of the most inflexible hostility to the Bank and its bribes, are crowding in upon us from all directions, and prove most triumphantly that neither the Nobility of Europe, nor the Federal Aristocrats of this country, possess money enough to buy the free people of Pennsylvania into submission, for a moment, to their dread engine of grinding exactions and slavery."

The Washington Globe denounces the whole transaction in strains of the most indignant eloquence. Our limits confine us to the following extracts:

THE UNITED STATES BANK.

"The bill now depending before the Pennsylvania Legislature to re-charter the Bank of the United States, is a measure which concerns the whole Union. It is a National Bank, to be chartered by a State, with express authority to establish branches, which authority was hardly necessary, as the Bank, from its immense capital of thirty-five millions, will be able to convert as many local banks as it pleases into agencies, and thus pervade the whole Union with its organized ramification of branches. Thus, whether branches are established by name, is perfectly immaterial, though authority to that effect is given in the Bank. It is in fact, in name, in object, and in declared design, a National Bank to be chartered by a State, and that Bank the same that the nation has for years rejected, and with new privileges not contained in the former charter, and with an exemption from the few restrictions which the present United States Bank charter contains. For instance; the present contains a clause that the Bank may be inspected by a committee; but the Pennsylvania charter dispenses with that formality; so that the old Bank, under its new charter, will be wholly free from the slight check of an inspection.

"This is the Bank which is to be given to the Union by a State Legislature!

The charter is for thirty years!

"The moment it passes, if pass it does, the great game of intrigue, bribery, and corruption commences in Congress and in every State Legislature. To obtain authority to establish branches, and to get a new charter from Congress, will be the daily and nightly work of the Bank until it is accomplished. It is to no purpose that the democracy may defeat it once, twice, three, five, or ten times. The effort will be continued during the thirty years that the charter has to run. It will be a thirty years' war. It will be, what Mr. Mangum proclaimed, a war between Rome and Carthage; in which, not victory, but subjugation and extermination, is the object. Congress will immediately become the great central theatre of operations. To elect members by fraud, favorable to the Bank, will be one part of the game; to corrupt others, after they are elected, will be the second part of it. Or the local banks in existence, for the largest part of them will become the confederates and instruments of the mammoth monster, and will work at elections, attend legislatures, influence legislation, oppress democrats, and uphold the scrub aristocracy, precisely according to the orders that they shall receive from Philadelphia. What a gulf of corruption, what a field of intrigue, what an agony of trial and suffering is now preparing at Harrisburg, for the whole Union! But let us not despond. There are two hopes yet remaining; first, the Democratic majority in the Pennsylvania Senate; then, the Democratic majority of the people of the State. Of the Senators, strong hopes are now entertained, notwithstanding the boasts of the Bank party, that seven have been secured; of the people, not a doubt remains. The whole State is in agitation; and it is affirmed that not one Democratic citizen, and not one Democratic press, has joined the monster. That the whole will be overthrown by the people, like the Yazoo fraud was, is the confident belief; and in the mean time the public sentiment, both in Pennsylvania and here, at Washington city, seems to be unanimous in concurring with the following resolution adopted at the largest meeting of the citizens ever known to be assembled in Berks county.

"Resolved, That we hold that member of our Legislature who aids in the re-establishment of this monster of corruption as unworthy of future confidence, and as a BRIBED and BASE sycophant, meriting the worst fate of a TRAITOR to the cause of equal rights and free government!!"

"Among the numerous signs and evidences of fraud and treachery which the United States Bank movement in the Pennsylvania Legislature exhibits, there is one which preeminently claims a moment's attention; it is the seven millions of stock now owned by the United States, and which, in the Pennsylvania charter, is left without an owner, and without mode prescribed of disposing of it. As the charter will stand, those seven millions of stock will fall into the hands of the Directory of the Bank, to dispose of as they may think proper; and it is very certain that they will think proper to divide it among themselves and their family connexions, and, peradventure, some of the voters for the Bank in the Pennsylvania Legislature. By this surrender of so much stock to the Directors, to do with as they think proper, a great profit is secured to them and their partners in the division of the spoil. The stock of the Bank is now at 21 per cent. advance in Philadelphia, which on seven millions, gives an advance of $1,470,000, and as the stock rises, will be increased until it probably reaches 100 per cent. advance, and consequently gives seven millions of profit to its holders.

Now, the question is obvious and emphatic; why was not this stock surrendered to the State of Pennsylvania? Why was the State not put in the place of the U. States, and thereby allowed to reap the benefit of the stock, which is already $1,470,000, and which will eventually be seven millions? This single circumstance shows treachery to the State, and collusion with the Directors; and if ever the time shall come when a committee of the Legislature of the State shall probe this foul transaction, will undoubtedly find that there was a secret, treacherous, collusive, fraudulent, and corrupt arrangement between the Bank and its legislative friends, on the subject of this identical seven millions of stock "

How differently did N. York act in 1812, from what Pennsylvania threatens to do in 1836! How superior is the course of Martin Van Buren to that of the Whigs'—This Biographer tells us, that

"When the project of replacing (the old Bank of the U.S) by the Banks of America in New York (only too with a capital of six millions out of the original ten, instead of the 35 millions!) was brought forward, Mr Van Buren took the most decided stand against it. He was active in originating a Convention of the Democracy of his county to oppose it, and delivered an elaborate and powerful speech against the proposed measure. In the Spring of 1812, Governor Tompkins prorogued the Legislature, to prevent the passage of the charter for the Bank; and Mr. Van Buren yielded this energetic, but necessary, exercise of power, his firmest support.'"

Most truly does the Norfolk Beacon observe, that "the proposed re-charter of this latter institution ought to engage the attentive consideration of the whole country. Its power is too colossal for a private institution. A Legislature may grant one, two, or even twenty millions banking capital to separate and isolated institutions with impunity, as has been done, but when such an amount is consolidated in a single bank, the Commonwealth which grants the charter, not only agrees that its own limbs should be bound, but presents at the same time a sword to its tyrant to pierce its own vitals. The whole country would suffer from the power of such an institution, when one man may determine to exercise it, and in a republic at least, we should refrain from confiding to the discretion of any set of men a power which is not called for by the occasion.

But, if it should succeed in seducing the Senate of Pennsylvania into a charter, what then? In the 1st place, we say again as we said on Thursday last, "If the charter contains a clause, as we believe it does, allowing a subsequent Legislature to cancel it, in case the public good or safety requires it, we have no hesitation in saying at once, that the sponge ought to be applied to it." In the 2d place, the whole history of its passage should be rigorously scanned, and if there be corruption found at the bottom of it; if bribes direct or indirect, have been held out to obtain a charter, as was attempted in the Legislature of New York in 1812, then who will hesitate to hunt it down? In the 3d place, if Pennsylvania can be so blind to her own character, as well as to the interests of the other States, as to quarter so tremendous an institution upon us, then it will become the duty of the Republicans of the other States, to rise in arms against it—to preserve their respective Legislatures pure and uncorrupted, and thus prevent the extension of its proposed branches—and confine the Hydra to the State which creates it.—We are aware the struggle will be violent—for, its means of corruption are ample and insidious. It may appeal to our own Legislature for countenance—it may wait its time to address itself also to Congress for a re-charter—but it will become the duty of the People of Virginia to make it a question at their Spring Elections; to call upon their candidates to say, "Are you for this Bank or not?"—and again, Bank, or no Bank? must become one of the tests at the Polls.—Accumulated wealth is the most alarming power of modern times. But what can compare with this Institution—armed as it is with the gigantic command of 35 millions—managed as it has been, to corrupt the Press—succeeding to all the political feelings which have directed its operations—chartered, as it was originally, in direct violation of the Federal Constitution—continued, as it will be, by direct and insidious bribes to the local interests of Pennsylvania, and the votes of her Representatives—and wielding a fearful power over the markets, the currency, the property, the politics of a whole people ?—If we quietly acquiesce in its efforts to throw its Branches or Agencies into our States, we may indeed almost tremble for the Republic.