AND THE WHIG COALITION 337 



ton 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 Repre- 

 sentatives, in choosing Adams, was really "defying 

 the will of the people." In similar wise President 

 Jackson, after his triumphant reelection in 1832, was 

 inclined to interpret his huge majorities as mean- 

 ing that the 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 democ- 

 racy toward practical despotism, under the leadership 

 of a headstrong and popular chief. Mr. Tyler saw in 

 it such a tendency, and he believed that the only safe- 

 guard for constitutional government, whether against 

 the arbitrariness of Jackson or the latitudinarianism 

 of the Whigs, lay in a most rigid adherence to strict 

 constructionist doctrines. Accordingly, in his speech 

 of the 24th of February, 1834, he proposed to go 

 directly to the root of the matter and submit the ques- 

 tion of a national bank to the people in the shape of 

 a constitutional amendment, either expressly forbid- 

 ding or expressly allowing Congress to create such an 

 institution. According to his own account, he found 

 Clay and Webster ready to cooperate with him in this 

 course, while Calhoun held aloof. Nothing came of 



