BRIBERY AND INTIMIDATION.
The reëstablishment and enlarged sway of this bank were greatly due to his efforts and influence; he became its largest stockholder and one of its directors. No business institution in the first three decades of the nineteenth century exercised such a sinister and overshadowing influence as this chartered monopoly. The full tale of its indirect bribery of politicians and newspaper editors, in order to perpetuate its great privileges and keep a hold upon public opinion, has never been set forth. But sufficient facts were brought out when, after years of partizan agitation, Congress was forced to investigate and found that not a few of its own members for years had been on the payrolls of the bank.3
In order to get its charter renewed from time to time and retain its extraordinary special privileges, the United States Bank systematically debauched politics and such of the press as was venal; and when a critical time came, as it did in 1832-34, when the mass of the people sided with President Jackson in his aim to overthrow the bank, it instructed the whole press at its command to raise the cry of