Page:The Presidents of the United States, 1789-1914, v. II.djvu/88

62 LIVES OF THE PRESIDENTS people were ready to uphold him in any course that he might see fit to pursue. This feeling no doubt strengthened him in his determined attitude toward the nullifiers, and it certainly contributed to his arbitrary and overbearing method of dealing with the bank, culminating in 1833 in his removal of the deposits. There was ground for maintaining that in this act the president exceeded his powers, and it seemed to illustrate the tendency of unbridled democracy toward despotism, under the leadership of a headstrong and popular chief. Mr. Tyler saw in it such a tendency, and he believed that the only safeguard for constitutional government, whether against the arbitrariness of Jackson or the lati- tudinarianism of the National Republicans, lay in a most rigid adherence to strict constructionist doctrines. Accordingly, in his speech of February 24, 1834, he proposed to go directly to the root of the matter and submit the question of a national bank to the people in the shape of a constitutional amendment, either expressly forbidding or ex pressly allowing congress to create such an institu tion. According to his own account, he found Clay and Webster ready to co-operate with him in this course, while Calhoun held aloof. Nothing came of the project: but it is easy to see in Mr. Tyler s attitude at this time the basis for a short-lived alliance with the National Republicans, whenever circumstances should suggest it. On Mr. Clay s