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382 The Tariff reduced. Jackson re-elected. [1329-33 Jackson now asked Congress for authority to collect the tariff duties in South Carolina by force, if necessary ; and his wishes were embodied in the Revenue Collection BiU the " Bloody Bill," the " Force Act," as the Nullifiers called it ; while Clay, to the amazement of his followers, introduced a new tariff bill. All existing duties, he proposed, should be reduced to an ad valorem basis of twenty per cent. Such as exceeded that rate were to be diminished gradually, one-tenth of the excess coming off in each of the years 1833, 1835, 1837, and 1839. One-half the remainder was to be removed in 1841, and the rest in 1842, when there would be a uniform tariff of twenty per cent, ad valorem on all dutiable goods. The struggle over each bill was long and bitter ; but they were both passed, the one to satisfy the North, the other to appease South Carolina. While the debate on the Force Bill was going on, the day when nullification was to come into effect drew near; but the ordinance was suspended by a mass-meeting of Nullifiers at Charleston. Now that South Carolina had triumphed, the convention reassembled in March, 1833 ; the ordinance of nullification was repealed, and the Force Act nullified ; and the first phase of the great struggle for State Rights passed into history. Two days after the passage of the Compromise Tariff and the Force Act, Jackson was a second time inaugurated President of the United States. The election is memorable because the Anti-Masons for the first time placed a candidate in the field ; because the candidates of each of the three parties were nominated by national conventions of delegates chosen by the people and not by the Congressional caucus or the State legislatures; and because the issue between the friends of Jackson and the friends of Clay was the re-charter of the Bank of the United States. The charter granted by Congress in 1816 was to continue for twenty years, and would not lapse till 1836. The Bank was the greatest financial institution of the country; it received and disbursed the revenues of the government, transacted the monetary affairs of the treasury abroad, had branches in the chief cities at home, provided the merchants with cheap exchange and the people with a uniform circulating medium, and did much to prevent an over-issue of paper money by the State banks which flooded the country with their notes. The political influence which such an institution might exert was apparent: and no sooner was Jackson inaugurated in 1829 than his party leaders endeavoured to force the Bank into politics on the side of the new Administration. The Bank resisted, and by so doing brought down upon it the wrath of the Jacksonian leaders, who found no difficulty in pushing the President into a long and bitter struggle which inflicted on the country great and unnecessary distress. Year after year, in 1829, 1830, and 1831, the President in his annual message denounced the Bank as unconstitutional, charged it with failure to regulate the currency, and questioned the safety of the government deposits. Year after year