Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/87

JOHN TYLER 61 emphatically: "I believe the bank to be the original sin against the constitution, which, in the progress of our history, has called into existence a numerous progeny of usurpations. Shall I permit this serpent, however bright its scales or erect its mien, to exist by and through my vote?" Nevertheless, strongly as he disapproved of the bank, Mr. Tyler disapproved still more strongly of the methods by which President Jackson assailed it. There seemed at that time to be growing up in the United States a spirit of extreme unbridled democracy quite foreign to the spirit in which our constitutional government, with its carefully arranged checks and limitations, was founded. It was a spirit that prompted mere majorities to insist upon having their way, even at the cost of overriding all consti tutional checks and limits. This spirit possessed many members of Jackson s party, and it found expression in what Benton grotesquely called the "demos krateo" principle. A good illustration of it was to be seen in Benton s argument, after the election of 1824, that Jackson, having received a plurality of electoral votes, ought to be declared president, and that the house of representatives, in choosing Adams, was "defying the will of the people." In similar wise President Jackson, after his triumphant re-election in 1832, was inclined to interpret his huge majorities as meaning that the