Men like Benton, for whom the policy of the government
in respect of the public lands had a vitality of interest
such as it did not possess for the public men of the
East, felt very keenly the need for some such heroic rem-
edy for speculation as Jackson's circular supplied ; men
like Calhoun saw no use in trying to amend the bank
system, and thought the maladies of the currency in-
curable except by acute suffering and a thorough natural
purging of all morbid humors. Jackson, probably at Ben-
ton's suggestion, had committed his party to a definite
course ; Van Buren meant to follow him consistently in
what he had done ; and the party leaders had nothing else
to suggest.
49. Bankine Beform (1837-1841).
The only group of politicians, apparently, which then
knew its own mind with reference to financial policy was
'•Loco-foco" made up of those Democrats, originally a
principles. local faction in New York and dubbed " Loco-
focos," who thought that they detected the chief danger
in the corruption incident upon the granting of bank
charters in the States, and in the folly of the unlimited
powers of note-issue conferred by those charters. They
plainly avowed their " unqualified hostility to bank notes
and paper money as a circulating medium" and to all
special grants of incorporation by state legislatures.
