It would be a criminal impeachment of the wisdom of the constituent power, to question the disinterested purity of motives of those who are chosen representatives. On the floor of Congress it would not be admitted. And mean suspicion and vain surmisings, are not to be nurtured in our fields, shops or firesides. But when men give rational evidence that their object is to disgrace others, and direct the people who to vote for, manly jealousy, and love of country, call upon the people to mark such men and avoid them. Such men bring a great pressure on our institutions, and unless their deposits are removed to the bank of private life, contention will continue, and ruin follow.

With due respect to Uncle Sam, Old Hickory and yourself, I subscribe, etc..

JOHN LELAND.

ADDRESS

AT A DEMOCRATIC MEETING HELD AT CHESHIRE, AUGUST 28, 1834.

Fellow-Citizens:—Were it not that I am publicly pledged, that " as long as I can speak with my tongue—wield a pen—or heave a cry to heaven, whenever the rights of men, the liberty of conscience, or the good of my country were invaded by fraud or force, my feeble efforts should not lie dormant," I should decline your invitation at this time on account of my age and incapacity. But, on your request, I attend with you to-day, and shall cast in my two mites for the support of this doctrine, viz: That the rights of man and the energy of law, when operating in their proper channels, are aids to each other; but when either or both of them grow licentious and proclaim war, if no expedient is found to check their hostility, either despotism or anarchy will follow. Tyranny is the licentiousness of great men ; anarchy the licentiousness of little men, both of which are destructive to rational liberty. Good government and equal laws form the expedient that sober reason has prescribed to check the vicious and unwearied propensities of the human heart, and bridle those desires and actions which cannot be tamed.

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If the leaders of the opposition would point out a better line of administration than that which has been in operation for the last six years, knowing that they themselves were not to be the agents of it, they would render good service to their country. This new light we would receive with great avidity and thankfulness. But, for this we have hitherto looked in vain. To find fault with what is done, without showing what could be done better, is no mark of a patriot or statesman. Let those fault-finding chieftains be notified now, if they never have been before, that their opposition is viewed by democratical republicans to be the child of hatred to the man whom the people have delighted to honor above them, and who will not bend before them; as well as the effect of ambition to rise into the chief seats of the synagogue themselves, and be called Rabbi—President, and Rabbi—Secretary. On the legislative floor we impeach the motives of none; but at home and at the polls we are governed by Lynch's law, and not by parliamentary fetters.

When Mr. Jefferson was elected president, the pulpits rang with alarms, and the presses groaned with predictions, that the Bibles would all be burned; meeting houses destroyed; the marriage bonds dissolved, and anarchy, infidelity and licentiousness would fill the land. These clerical warnings and editorial prophecies all failed. Instead thereof, during his administration, the national debt was reduced $40,000,000; the internal taxes taken off; the vast territory of the west was added to the United States, and every man sat quietly under his vine and fig tree, enjoying the freedom of his religion and the attachment of his wife and children. So with respect to Gen. Jackson. Before he came into office, the alarm guns were fired in every direction. "He has no learning; he is not experienced in diplomacy; he is only a military chieftain; he is lawless; he is a murderer; if he should be president, the members of Congress must go armed to Washington; better be cursed with war, famine or pestilence, than be under military rule," &c. But the nerves of the people sustained the shock, and raised him to the highest office in their gift.

But a heterogeneous band have been and still are hunting him like a partridge on the mountains, and are determined to neither eat nor drink un. til they have killed Paul. But he, with unruffled temper, like the horses in Pharaoh's chariot, keeps on his course of seeking the good of the people, regardless of all the yelping puppies that seek to snap at his feet.

During his administration, the national debt has been reduced to a mere fraction; duties lessened; treaties formed; rewards for spoliations obtained; vast tracts of land purchased of the Indians, &c. For more than sixty years I have been old enough to observe the state of things, and can honest. ly say, that as far as I can judge, I have never seen a time of greater pros perity, among every class of citizens, than the present: look which way I will, the proofs of prosperity are before my eyes. Nor can I conceive how rational beings can expect more from government than we enjoy.

From the first operation of our government, in 1789, until the present time, there has always been some question afloat to agitate the public mind the present question is the Bank of the United States.

When the constitution first made its appearance, in the autumn of 1787, I read it with close attention, and finally gave my vote for its adoption; and after the amendments took place, I esteemed it as good a skeleton as could well be formed (never, however, liking the Judiciary Department of it.) I had then no thought of a bank, and had heard nothing said about it. When the bank was first chartered, it was an act I had never looked for; but being ignorant of commercial and fiscal concerns, I held my peace, concluding that other men knew better than myself; and in that acquiescence I have lived until this time, without ever studying banking principles. Of late, however, the exteriors of the bank have struck my mind.

Very soon after Gen. Jackson began to administer, in a public document he made an avowal of the intrinsic evils, dangerous tendency and party application of the bank, in his view of it. This he did to awaken the attention of the people, and give the directors of the bank time to settle their accounts before the expiration of the charter, in case it should not be renewed.

The spirit of this inquiry he kept alive during his first term of administration. The plain language of which was: "Fellow-citizens, I give you my views of the bank, and shall act upon those principles; if you respond to those sentiments I am ready to serve you; if not, elect another agent." The people, with their eyes open, again elected him to the presidency, giving him more than two-thirds of their votes; which was one evidence that they were opposed to the bank, under its present regulations. Soon after this the secretary of the treasury (in conformity to chartered right) removed the national deposites from the bank of United States to other banks. This has occasioned warm feeling and inflammatory harangues beyond measure.

The Senate have passed a vote of censure on the president, and will not admit his protest to be entered on their journal. The reasons of the secretary they declare insufficient, and, in their executive capacity, have refused to confirm his nomination. The House of Representatives have voted that the bank ought not to be re-chartered, and that the removal of the deposites is in conformity to the charter of the bank, and expedient as well as legal. The case is now at issue between the advocates for the bank and its foes; which case the sovereign people will decide; and if they are rightly informed, will judge uprightly. What I have seen and heard in this unusual struggle about the bank, compels me to say that if one was to inform me that the president and directors of the bank, and all its warm advocates, were disinterested patriots, and had only the good of the country at heart; that they really believed that agriculture, manufactures, and commerce, would all languish, and national bankruptcy follow unless the bank should be continued, I should find myself so unbelieving that I should have to pray, "Lord, increase my faith," for my faith in this information would not be equal to a grain of mustard-seed. But if another was to tell me that the bank, in its present form, was a dangerous institu. tion; the stockholders a privileged class; that the directors were unsubmissive; and that the warm advocates for its re-charter are either stockholders in the bank or receive her smiles and kisses, I should believe the report without requiring signs and miracles to confirm my faith.

The Senate of the United States is an august assemblage; chosen by the legislatures of the several states; holding their offices for six years; partaking of a part of the legislative, executive, and judiciary powers: how important! An ambassador at Rome once said, "The Senate of Rome is

an assembly of the Gods, but my own countrymen are a herd of Hydras." But such is the weakness and depravity of human nature, that men in the highest stations may do wrong. That the Senate did, at their last session, abuse the president, the secretary of the treasury, and the postmastergeneral, is notorious: but passing that by, there were some laws passed in the session that bid fair to be of great utility.

The gold bill will have a natural tendency to stop the exportation of American eagles, and bring back many of the fugitives to their native soil. Making foreign silver current, will have a like tendency to bring much of it from the states in the silver regions. Gold mines are somewhat prolific in some of our southern states. Add to this the twenty millions of specie that have lately been shipped into the United States; and a permanent cur. rency, sufficient for a medium of barter, may be established.

If banks shall nevertheless be necessary to facilitate commerce, let them be chartered in the states, with this proviso, that no bills of a less denomi nation than $10 shall be emitted. This scheme, or something like it, would make the people of the United States happy in their fiscal concerns. It is a given truth that there is no intrinsic value in paper currency; not as much as there is in a paper of pins or an iron nail. The value of it is nominal, not real; it is the evidence of wealth, which is not in itself. I here close my superficial remarks on the exteriors of the bank of the United States, and leave the constitutionality and expediency of it to be elucidated by its friends and foes before the great tribunal, the sovereign people, and shall cheerfully submit to the decision.

The friends of the present administration have nothing to flatter them at present in this commonwealth at large, or even in this congressional district, where a decided and overwhelming majority of numbers, wealth and talent are against it. But so many changes, divisions, subdivisions, trisions, quatrisions, cleavings off, and splicings together, take place; and at every new jump a new name is given; that he who follows the times needs the sagacity of a hound, to follow the crooked track of a fox.

Among a thousand things that might be said to encourage the persevering democratic minority, let one be sufficient.

The early settlers of New England had a strong notion of a Christian commonwealth; that Christians had the same pre-eminence over the heathen that the Israelites had over the inhabitants of Canaan; that as God gave the tribes the land of the Canaanites, so also it was his will that Christians should take away the land of the Indians. Another idea they entertained, that although diocesan government of the church was unscriptural and cruel, yet each town should (under act of the legislature) by a major vote, compel all to attend the worship and support the preacher that the majority preferred. In these things Roger Williams, minister of Salem, withstood them; and for manfully maintaining that religious opinions