"offering no less violence to the spirit of the Constitution than a proposition to prevent the people from bearing arms in self-defence"

   "If any other testimony, beyond this vote, were wanting, to prove the gross inconsistency of Martin Van Buren and many of his leading friends in this behalf, it is furnished in the speech made against Gen. Gordon's bill by Mr. Speaker Polk, in which he pronounced the banks to be "greatly safer as depositories than any individual." The Globe, the Albany Argus, the Richmond Enquirer, and other leading organs of the party, at that day, spoke of it as "demoralizing, corrupt, consolidating in its political tendencies" and as "a scheme calculated to put the money of the people into the palms of the executive, and to expose it to be plundered by an hundred hands." The Ex-President, himself, in his last Message to Congress, spoke of it as offering no less violence to the spirit of the Constitution than a proposition to prevent the people from bearing arms in self-defence. In short, Mr. Talmadge, Mr. Rives, Mr. Polk, Mr. Cambrelling, Col. Johnson and all the Jackson party were opposed to it during Mr. Van Buren's canvass for the Presidency, in which he promised to "tread, generally, in the footsteps of his predecessor." Mr. Van Buren was elected on these promises, and because the opposition were dispirited and distracted between three rival candidates, and thousands cast their votes for Martin Van Buren purely and solely to avoid an election by the House."

- Boon's Lick Times, Fayette, Missouri, Saturady, April 4, 1840. Vol.--No. 3. Pg. 2.