the establishment of seminaries for education throughout the United States." This outcropping of the notions which entered into all the big banks of the States schemes is worthy of notice. The plan was to have the federal state carry out the same operation with the States, as the State, in all those schemes, did with the counties, and the proposition came from the core of the State rights group who were fighting the Bank. The very men and the very school of opinion who were hostile to banks altogether on the federal arena, invented and established the big State paper money machines.
Love of Virginia reported, April 2, 1810, an elaborate plan of a national bank, to have its seat at Washington, and branches in such States as consented. The States were to subscribe shares which were allotted to them. It was something between the proposed Bank of the United States and the big banks of the States. April 7th, a bill was introduced to continue for twenty years the existing Bank of the Unit States with the modifications which Gallatin had suggested. A bonus of $1.25 millions was to be paid within the year; the Bank was to loan the government not more than $5,000,000, at not more than six per cent., and it was to pay three per cent. on the minimum annual balance of the public deposits in excess of $3 millions. April 13th, this bill was debated in Committee of the Whole, but the House never gave the Committee of the Whole permission to debate it further.
Although the Bank had presented the subject in 1808, it never was really considered in Congress until January, 1811, three months before the charter was to expire. Perhaps the most representative speech against the Bank was that of Dasha, of Kentucky. He said that the question was: "Whether we will foster a viper in the bosom of our country that will spread its deadly venom over the land, and finally affect the vitals of your republican institutions; or whether we will, as it is our duty, apply the proper antidote by a refusal to renew the charter, thereby checking the cankering poison, the importation and dissemination of foreign influence, that has already brought our government to the brink of ruin." He had no doubt that George III was a stockholder in the Bank. He viewed all banks as hostile to the principles of our government. Commerce was but little better, yet he was not hostile to it, but wanted it kept "within the pale of reason." The large foreign capital in this Bank, he said, gave the tone to elections in New York until Burr checked it with the Manhattan Company. He was sufficiently familiar with banks to be convinced that "they are systems of speculation, calculated to suit the speculatory and mercantile class at the expense of those who are the support and sheet-anchor of your government." He referred with scorn to the broken banks of New England. The information of the speculations and swindlings in the East had made the West shun "the possibility of being engulfed in a similar vortex." The Bank "will further the views of federalism by increasing their power, and assist them in overturning the present system of government, on the ruins of which they will count upon raising one more congenial to their purposes." Not only the British capital in the
