Politics & Power Quote by Andrew Jackson

Andrew Jackson warns that concentrated wealth seeks to capture the machinery of the state, twisting laws and policies to private advantage rather than public good. The phrasing is careful and damning at once: "too often" implies a recurring pattern, while "bend the acts of government" suggests not open defiance but a subtler corruption of legitimate processes. He casts the problem as moral as well as political, faulting the pursuit of "selfish purposes" where republican virtue should prevail.

The line comes from Jackson’s 1832 veto message rejecting the recharter of the Second Bank of the United States. He argued that the Bank conferred special privileges on a narrow class of stockholders, including foreign investors, and wielded outsized influence over credit and elections. By framing the conflict as people versus entrenched elites, he grounded his veto in a democratic ethos: the state must extend equal protection and equal privileges, not legal monopolies. This logic fueled the Bank War, energized Jacksonian democracy, and redefined the presidency as a tribune of the popular will.

Yet the claim also exposes tensions in Jackson’s own project. He expanded executive power as he battled the Bank and removed federal deposits, contributing to the rise of state “pet banks” and speculative excess that helped set the stage for the Panic of 1837. His spoils system rewarded partisan loyalty, and his support for Indian removal bent the acts of government toward white settler interests at devastating human cost. The critique of elite capture coexisted with policies that empowered different constituencies to bend government in their favor.

The warning endures. Lobbying, campaign finance, and regulatory capture show how wealth can still steer public policy. Jackson’s challenge is less a policy blueprint than a democratic test: can institutions be kept independent enough and broad-minded enough that public law serves the many rather than the few?