presented, have gone against the separation without gross inconsistency? Again, I then declared myself to be utterly opposed to a combination or league of State banks, as being the most efficient and corrupting fiscal agent the government could select, and more objectionable than a bank of the United States. I again appeal, is there a sentiment or a word in all this contradictory to what I have said or done on the present occasion? So far otherwise, is there not a perfect harmony and coincidence throughout, which, considering the distance of time and the difference of the occasion, is truly remarkable, and this extending to all the great and governing questions now at issue?

66 I am not among those who believe that the currency was in a sound condition when the deposits were removed in 1834. I then believed, and experience has proved I was correct, that it was deeply and dangerously diseased; and that the most efficient measures were necessary to prevent the catastrophe which has since fallen on the circulation of the country. There was then not more than one dollar in specie, on an average, in the banks, including the United States Bank and all, for six of bank notes in circulation, and not more than one in eleven compared to liabilities of the banks, and this while the United States Bank was in full and active operation, which proves conclusively that its charter ought not to be renewed, if renewed at all, without great modifications."

Extract from a Speech of Mr. Hubbard's in Senate of U. S., on the Rescinding of the Treasury Order, 11th July, 1836.

"IT has been said that the pressure is not as great as is represented. I know it to be most severe. When the best notes in our cities are sold at a discount, and sold so as to yield an interest of two, three, and even four per cent. per month, let no one say that the pressure is mere pretence. It is an awful and cruel reality."

MR. BUCHANAN'S REMARKS IN THE SENATE OF THE U. S., JULY 3, 1836.

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(Extracts.)

LET us proceed a step farther. One of the most essential powers and duties of any modern government is that of regulating the paper currency within its jurisdiction. This is emphatically the exercise of sovereignity, and is, in its nature, a high political power. It is scarcely second in importance to the power of coining money; because the paper circulation represents the current coin. This power is now exclusively possessed by the State Legislatures, whether rightfully or not it is too late to inquire. By means of its exercise they can raise or they can sink the value of every man's property in the community. They can make the man who was poor yesterday rich to-day. They can elevate or depress the price of the necessaries of life and the wages of labour, according to their pleasure. By creating a redundant currency they may depreciate the value of money to such a degree as to ruin our manufactures, depress our agriculture, and involve our people in rash and demoralising speculations.

What use have these Legislatures made of this sovereign power? They have transferred it to a thousand State banks, they have yielded up all control over it; and if the doctrine now contended for be correct, these banks cannot be disturbed in the exercise of this attribute of sovereign power by any human authority. They hold it under the sacred shield of the constitution of the United States. It is now deemed a matter of immense importance to restrain the issue of small notes and substitute a specie circulation in their stead. But the banks can laugh you to scorn. The whole power of Congress, and that of all the Legislatures of all the twenty-six States of this vast Union cannot prohibit the circulation of notes of a less denomination than five dollars. If this be the case, did ever so great an absurdity exist upon the face of the earth under the government of any people? Congress have, by some means or other, lost the control over the paper currency of the country. The States to whom it belongs have granted it to a thousand banking corporations; and, although the people of the States may change and modify their fundamental institutions at pleasure, yet this banking power remains unhurt amidst the general wreck. If this be true the people of the United States are completely at the mercy of these institutions. The creature will give laws to the creator.

Speech of Mr. Benton of Missouri, in Senate of the United States, December 9, 1836, on the rescision of the Treasury Order.

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(Extracts.)

HAVING stated the number of the banks in the United States, he would say a word as to their reputed capitals and circulation. The chartered capital was computed at near one thousand millions of dollars; the paid-up capital was stated at three hundred and twenty-five millions; the chartered right to issue paper-money exceeded one thousand millions; and the actual circulation was computed at one hundred and thirty millions. Now, all the specie in the country is computed at seventy-five millions, and all in the banks at forty-five millions; so that the reputed paid-up capital is four times greater than all the specic in the country, and seven times greater than all the specie the banks possess. Mr. B. did not pretend that the banks should always have all their capital in their hands, but he did insist that it must be in the country, so that when needed it could be had. The reputed paid-up capital is not in the country, by a difference of four to one so that the fact stands revealed that a great proportion of these banks are banking on stock-notes, and on each other's notes; and the stockholders not being liable, the foundations of a great number of these banks must be unsolid and delusive; entirely unsafe for the community to rely upon; and that it would be a cruel thing for the Federal Government, by increasing their credit, to extend the sphere of their circulation, and to enlarge the vortex of their mischief when the day comes to which all unsolid banks are daily liable.

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*

The Expenses of the Paper System.-This was probably greater at present than the expenses of the Federal Government, and the whole a tax upon the productive classes. The number of banks was about one thousand; each bank had its officers, and they their salaries; each

had its stockholders, and they their profits. Then came losses for broken banks, counterfeits and depreciated paper, and changes in the value of property from expansions and contractions of the currency.

Remarks of Mr. Duncan, of Ohio, in the House of Representatives, December 18, 1837.

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SPEAKING of the proceeding of the bank party in 1834, he says," Corruption and bribery walked naked, shameless, and fearless in the highways. * * The newspaper-presses were bought in the public market. The doubting were made to tremble, and the firm to fear. Look, sir," said he, "at their newspaper-presses; how far have they fallen from the holy purposes for which they were originally invented and established! In place of being the mediums through which virtue, science, and general intelligence is to flow to the public mind, they have become the receptacles of all that is abominable in slander and vile in detraction. Their columns have become the filthy sewers and polluted sluices through which there is no slander too base, or falsehood too malignant and poisonous, to pass, to the destruction of morals and the peace of society.

"The virtuous and the patriotic find no advocates in them. The warrior and the statesman, whose lives have been worn down in the service of their country's highest interests, are alike the subjects of their abuse and detraction. And look, sir, at their swarms of letterwriters, who annoy you at every step and every corner, who, like lank, lounging, hungry dogs, lean upon the gate-posts, and yelp and howl around this capitol, and feed upon the crumbs that fall from the tables of those who are themselves the subjects of bank corruption and Federal bribery."

Opinion of Mr. J. Q. Adams, late President of the United States upon Suspensions.

"THE violation of moral principle committed by a bank in suspending specie payments is, in my estimation, not inferior to that of fraudulent bankruptcy in an individual. The right of any legislature to authorise such a suspension is questionable, and the repeal of laws expressly enacted to enforce the fulfilment of contracts, at the very moment when they have been broken, is a mockery of all moral principle and a scandal to human legislation.'

TWENTY-FOURTH CONGRESS, SECOND SESSION.

March 3, 1837.

MR. GALBRAITH, from the select committee to which the subject had been referred, made the following report :

*

* THE banking system, as it now exists in this country, is a machinery of no ordinary complexity and magnitude. Few subjects are less generally understood; and, at the same time, few, if any, in the scale of political existence, affect more closely the interests of every man in society.

The banking business in America is performed almost entirely by companies incorporated for the purpose by the legislatures of the several States. These banking companies are not merely offices of loan and deposit; they are also offices of discount and banks of circulation, or manufacturers of paper-money: that is, they are not merely authorized to loan what money they actually have, at the legal rate of interest, and to undertake the safe-keeping of money for a reasonable per centage for their risk and trouble, but they are also authorized to discount notes of those who wish to borrow, and manufacture paper-money to the amount of twice or thrice the amount of money they really possess. They are permitted, in fact, to supply with their own paper the circulating medium of the country.

*

* Let him who doubts the effects of the system trace the wild schemes of speculation and extravagance which prevailed for the few years previous, immediately on the heels of the litters of banks chartered by the middle States, from 1814 till 1817, the charter of the United States Bank in 1816, and the extension of the same mania for bank facilities that extended shortly afterwards to the west-let him look at the scenes of distress, failures, bankruptcies, which followed in 1819 and 1820;-the stop-laws, stay-laws, replevin-laws, and a host of legislative expedients to which the legislatures were driven to save the people from absolute and immediate ruin, while bank directors and stockholders were rioting in luxury and rolling in wealth, and the labouring classes driven to poor-houses, or sentenced to penitentiaries; the similar scenes that were acted over again in 1826, and again in 1833-34, when the United States Bank sought to obtain a continuance of its lordly power through the ruin of the people, and curtailed its discounts at the rate of 2,000,000 dollars per month for that purpose; then say if the representation is much overdrawn.

*

Extracted from a Report made to the Senate of the State of Massachusetts, in January, 1830, as follows:

"The Sutton bank was incorporated the 11th March, 1828. The act of incorporation provides that the capital stock of said corporation shall consist of one hundred thousand dollars in gold and silver, to be divided into shares of one hundred dollars each, which shall be paid in the manner following, viz.: one-half part thereof on or before the 1st day of October [then] next, and the remaining part thereof on or before the 1st day of March, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and twenty-nine.' And it further provides that no moneys shall be loaned, or discounts made, nor shall any bills or promissory notes be made or issued from the said bank, until the capital subscribed and actually paid in, and existing in gold and silver in said vaults, shall amount to fifty thousand dollars; nor until the said capital stock, actually in said vaults, shall have been inspected and examined by the commissioners to be appointed by the governor for that purpose, whose duty it shall be, at the expense of the said corporation, to examine the money actually existing in said vaults; and to ascertain,

by the oaths of the directors of the said bank, or a majority of them, that the said capital stock hath been bonâ fide paid in by the stockholders of said bank, and towards the payment of their respective shares, and not intended for any other purpose, and that it is intended there to remain as part of said capital.

"On the 26th day of September, 1828, the governor, in compliance with an application for that purpose made by a committee of the subscribers for stock in said Sutton bank, appointed commissioners to examine the moneys actually existing in the vaults of said bank, as is provided in the second section of their act of incorporation. On the 27th day of September, 1828, the Sutton bank borrowed, on a deposit of fifty-one thousand dollars in bills of the City bank, the sum of fifty thousand dollars in specie for one day only; this same specie was examined by the commissioners, and the following certificates made out, viz. :—

"We the subscribers, commissioners appointed for that purpose, have this day been shown, and have examined, fifty thousand dollars in specie in the vaults of the Sutton bank, whigh was paid in by the stockholders at their first instalment, agreeably to their act of incoporation passed the 11th day of March, 1828.

JONATHAN LELAND. 'AMASA ROBERTS. 'SAMUEL WOOD.

Boston, September 27, 1828.

Then personally appeared Hezekiah Howe, Jonas L. Sibby, Joshua W. Leland, and Thomas Harbach, being a majority of directors of Sutton bank, and made oath that fifty thousand dollars in specie, by them shown in their vaults, was the first instalment paid by the stockholders of their bank towards the payment of their respective shares, and not for any other purpose, and that it is intended therein to remain a part of said capital. 'Before me,

ELIPHALET WILLIAMS, J. P.'

"The bills and specie were then re-exchanged, this whole business accomplished within an hour, and all of it done within the walls of the City bank, in the city of Boston.'

United States Gazette, March 11th, 1838.

COMMERCIAL BANK OF BOSTON.-A gentleman, arrived in this city yesterday morning from Boston, reported that the president and cashier of the Commercial Bank, Boston, had been notified to appear before a committee for the purpose of examining into its affairs, when it was ascertained both of those gentlemen had absconded.

The examination into the affairs and property of the bank took place, and it was found that the president and cashier had put into circulation 120,000 dollars in post-notes more than the directors had any knowledge of, and 40,000 dollars of their old bank-notes, which the directors had ordered to be burnt.

It will be recollected that the above is one of the suspended banks.