that it was not at all necessary and proper now. Just so Clay had reasoned in 1811. It was in overruling the Supreme Court that Jackson in the veto uttered the famous sentence: “Each public officer who takes an oath to support the Constitution swears that he will support it as he understands it, and not as it is understood by others.”
The arrival of the veto in the Senate was the signal for a grand explosion of oratory. Webster opened the debate with his heaviest artillery of argument; Clay, Ewing, and Clayton spoke, thundering magnificently against the veto and its author. With great force it was argued that the bank denounced by Jackson as an unconstitutional and tyrannical monopoly was, in all essential features, the bank established under Washington and sanctioned by him; that the privileges it enjoyed were far outweighed by the services it rendered to the country; that the holding of bank stock by foreigners, who were excluded from taking part in its management, was as little dangerous to the country as the holding by foreigners of United States bonds; that, according to the doctrine of President Jackson, a law held to be constitutional by the Supreme Court was not binding upon him if he saw fit to deny its constitutionality; that, if such a doctrine prevailed, there was an end of all law and judicial authority, and the President was an autocrat like Louis XIV.; and finally, that the overthrow of the bank would plunge all business interests into confusion, and the whole country
