WRITINGS OF SAM HOUSTON, 1849
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at the beginning, at the end, and throughout the harrassing agita- tion he engendered by his selfish intrigues. His multiplied shame- less inconsistencies; his early co-operation with the sordid classes that made her a prey; his unintermitting hostilities upon the patriot President who devoted himself to redress all her real grievances; and his final coalition with the leaders of the whole scheme of oppression, in the origin of which he assisted, leave him very little credit to expend in the effort he is now making to sacrifice to his morbid ambition, the characters of men never wanting in their duty to their whole country, or to their imme- diate constituents. He bas ever continued to smite the rock of agitation with the rod of all his influence, not, as did the ancient man of God, that the nourishing waters of health and concilia- tion might flow out, but to cause the bitter and poisonous water of sectional jealousy and disunion to overflow the land. Verily, the people of this great confederacy have retributive rewards in store for all statesmen, sooner or later, who thus minister in their affairs. But he was father to another measure of the Federal Government, which involved pecuniary interests and polit- ical rights generally to a vast extent, but which most peculiarly affected the South as putting the prices of its commercial staples at the mercy of Northern capitalists. Apart from the political influence which the national bank commanded, by its corrupting power in and out of Congress and over all the Departments- enabling its managers to shape the course of Government for the advantage of the moneyed class concerned in it--the control which the secret conclave of directors had over the currency every where, by expanding and contracting it, by diminishing and enlarging its credit, put the markets completely in the power of a junta of capitalists. Of all federal encroachments, the people of the West and South (the South especially) looked on this as the most formidable.· Mr. Calhoun's partisans at one time declared the vote of Mr. Crawford to charter the old Bank of the United Sfates as his greatest crime. Mr. Calhoun's then new-born Democ- racy had doubtless many motives to revolt at it. But when it became his cue to conciliate Northern capitalists, to assist his steps to premature advancement, for which he pined, he could not give them too much. When he gave them the protective tariff of 1816 he carried a bank for them through Congress; and, to round off th·e whole system and make it permanent he sought to
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