Nor is this the only point in which the charter of the Bank of the United States requires modification; its relations with the Federal government, as well as with the State governments, need to be modified; and some projects worthy of consideration, in this view, have been broached. It would also, probably, be expedient, as Mr Cambreleng has remarked, to change the rules and regulations relating to private and public deposits, and to provide that in future they should bear interest as they do in the Scotch banks. If this system were adopted by all the American banks, they would gain in solidity, and they would embrace the interest of all classes, and become provident institutions for the general good; while at present, their direct profits, the dividends, fall exclusively to the share-holders, who belong to the wealthier classes; a fact which contributes not a little to their unpopularity. Finally, it would be proper to consider to what degree the immediate advantages of credit might be extended to mechanics and farmers. In this respect the banks are yet absolutely aristocratical institutions, the Americans having preserved in banking almost all the usages of their ancestors, the English. The American banks are now chiefly devoted to the use of speculators and merchants.
In the midst of so many contradictions, it is difficult to foresee what will be the issue of the struggle. The friends of the Administration maintain that President Jackson and Vice President Van Buren are not only opposed to the Bank as it is, but to any National Bank, and that they will never yield. The Globe, the avowed organ of the President, has told Mr Clay, that unless he _can find a Brutus_ (to assassinate General Jackson,) the Bank will neither have the deposits nor a new charter. We may doubt, however, whether the President's mind is so decisively made up, and after all a majority of both houses can set at nought the _veto_. As to the Vice President, whom his opponents call the cunning Van Buren, as he aspires to succeed the President, many persons declare that his object is to gain the vote of the powerful State of New York, by transferring thither the seat of the Mother Bank, but that he is too enlightened seriously to wish the destruction of an institution fraught with so much good to the country.