Let them call for an
investigation, and I shall ever stand ready to respond to the call. But
they have made no such call. I make the assertion boldly, and without
fear of contradiction, that no man, who does not hold an office, or does
not aspire to one, has ever found any fault of the Bank. It has doubled
the prices of the products of their farms, and filled their pockets with
a sound circulating medium, and they are all well pleased with its
operations. No, Sir, it is the politician who is the first to sound the
alarm (which, by the way, is a false one.) It is he, who, by these
unholy means, is endeavoring to blow up a storm that he may ride upon and
direct. It is he, and he alone, that here proposes to spend thousands of
the people's public treasure, for no other advantage to them than to make
valueless in their pockets the reward of their industry. Mr. Chairman,
this work is exclusively the work of politicians; a set of men who have
interests aside from the interests of the people, and who, to say the
most of them, are, taken as a mass, at least one long step removed from
honest men.
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