Advocates of these national enterprises were encouraged by a clause
in the Bank bill of 1816. In order to compel the State banks to resume
specie payment and to rearrange the national finances after the war,
the Republicans had been compelled to resort to the infamous Hamiltonian
remedy of chartering a United States bank. Only financial desperation
could warrant the adoption of a suggestion which the party had rejected
five years before. Unconstitutionally scarcely had a mention in the
debates on the bill. Republican speakers and writers advocated a bank
as eagerly as they had opposed one in 1791 and 1811. Calhoun was in
favour of a new bank and Webster was opposed to it.
This second bank was chartered, like the first, for twenty years. It
had a similar plan of organisation, although with a larger capital.
It differed most in offering to the National Government, not only a
share of stock, but a "bonus," or gift, of a million and a half dollars
for the privilege of the charter. Visions of internal improvements
made possible by such a handsome gift immediately arose in the minds
of some, although suspicion was the strongest feeling in the minds of
others.
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