far exceed a million of dollars. Probably about seven-tenths of the amount have been disposed of east, and the balance west of this city. Indeed I believe he can comparatively have but little genuine paper afloat, or in bank. It is ascertained that the name of Daniel E. Evans has been forged to paper exceeding two hundred and fifty thousand dollars; and the names of several of our respectable citizens to a very large amount each. About seventy thousand dollars of Mr. R.'s paper are in one bank in Ohio, every dollar of which is probably forged. And what appears marvellous in this transaction, several thousand dollars of forged endorsements are held by brokers in our own city, the counterfeit so perfect, and the payment so punctual, that it has not been discovered, although such paper has been in market weekly, if not daily, for the last eighteen months."

The following, from the correspondence of the Albany Argus, gives a variety of interesting particulars in relation to the Rathbun affair, and other matters in that section of the country.

"Buffalo, August, 1836.. "Dear Sir,--This is a large place, and, like Plattsburgh, as the old song has it,' will grow bigger tho' hereafter.' Everything seems to be done on a large scale. Private individuals dig ship-canals, and it excites no surprise for one man to talk of erecting a building at an expense of 500,000 dollars. Even Rathbun's stupendous frauds are characteristic of the place, not in respect to their turpitude, but their magnitude. Of course, his operations afford the principal topic of conversation. Not only is his name in every man's mouth, but the marks of his enterprise and taste are visible in every part of the city. The theatre, a very chaste and beautiful building, was built by Rathbun. A hotel just opened, and surpassing in size, splendour, and interior arrangements, any thing out of New York, was built by him. A range of seventeen spacious stores, besides others scattered about the streets, owe their erection to him. Churches, and other public buildings, and many private dwellings, all exhibiting great taste and good workmanship, are his work. His lumber and stone yards, and his brick-kilns, are on a large scale, and well supplied. He had, indeed, provided for making ten millions of bricks this season. He owned some forty or fifty post-coaches and five or six hundred horses, and all, or almost all, of a good kind. He had, as I understand, about fifty miles of the western end of the stage-route between this place and Albany entirely to himself, and it certainly was the best part of the whole line-having better horses and carriages, better attendance, and exhibiting a greater desire to accommodate the public. His range of stables, coach-houses, and workshops were all substantial and convenient buildings, and well appointed. Such also were his stores and warehouses-well built and

well filled. He must have been a remarkable man, to have been able to conduct and control business so various and of such magnitude. His forgeries were upon the same extended scale. I am credibly informed that it is now ascertained, by an examination of his papers, that, from the commencement of his forgeries to the present time, they amount to about 7,000,000 dollars. No crime of the same magnitude is, I believe, on record.

"Notwithstanding his crimes, there is much sympathy for him here. He was always honourable and generous in his dealings. He has given employment to a great many labourers. He has done more than any other one man to build up and adorn this city; and his works will remain many years to attest his taste and enterprise, and to perpetuate also the memory of his offences.

"I have not heard any one make the remark, which seems to me to follow very justly from this case, and that is, that under no other circumstances than the general spirit of speculation which pervades every portion of the community, and this part particularly, could such an extended fraud have continued so long undetected. In ordinary times, the magnitude of his operations would have led to an earlier disclosure."

I find, Sir, that I have digressed: I was speaking of trades, and intended to have noticed them more generally, though I believe the state of my own trade to be a fair sample of the whole. They all declared, from one end of the country to the other, when they were, two or three years back, on strike for wages, that they had been reduced to the lowest possible degree. The hand-loom weavers said: “Whereas we, the hand-loom weavers, have been hitherto the victims of systematic injustice and oppression, by which our wages have been curtailed until we have been reduced to a state of penury and want almost beyond human endurance, rendering our very existence a precarious tenure, and inflicting a mental and physical degradation to which we neither can nor will any longer submit."

Poor fellows! they have, however, submitted, since then, to much greater deprivation, all of which is not sufficient to open their eyes to the true cause of their distress, or, surely, they would have been opened before this; for we find, in Niles' Weekly Register, in 1817, how the system, besides its regular drain, periodically plundered the nation. Our banking institutions have raised up an aristocracy that portends a fearful prostration of the public rights and private independence of the people. Ostensibly designed for great and noble purposes, to assist the operations of industry and encourage enterprise, they are more and more becoming sinks of speculation and tyranny-centre points at which some interested in them insidiously and dishonestly collect their unholy

profits upon the necessities of the poor-mere facilities for brokers and money-changers. Of all sorts of tyranny, deliver me from that of

avarice!

Our citizens are becoming indignant at the unnecessary sufferings and losses occasioned by and through these institutions: but, unhappily, they have not the power, or want the courage, to do what they ought to redress them. They see the worthless and unprincipled rearing princely fortunes by speculations, and repine that honest industry languishes and is compelled to contribute of its scanty means to the wealth of the undeserving drones of society, that ought to be expelled from the hive.

"I am in possession of some disgraceful facts, which I dare not publish, lest they might ruin that friend who communicated them; for the state of the case is so, that suspicion would light upon him, and to be 'suspected of being suspicious,' by the banks, is ruinous to those dependent upon them.

"It is not enough that we, the people, are every day subjected to the receipt of counterfeit notes, or of those of small denominations altered to pass for those of greater denominations, which are as plenty as blackberries,' and so artfully done as almost to defy detection by those who may be considered good judges of them; and that we, for three years, took their paper without interest, and at a sacrifice of from 15 to 20 per cent. on it, compared with money, while they made us pay interest on every scrap of paper they took from us; but that we should still be plagued and wronged by their arbitrary and useless rules in receiving or rejecting such notes of other banks as they please, which the very nature of their institution has made the medium of the commerce of the country.

"The things that are here spoken of are as freely discussed and as severely reprehended in every private circle; but so it is, that the press, which should bring about a reformation of abuses, is so fettered, that it dares not move in the business. The speculators form a considerable part of what the newspaper-editors call their advertising patrons,' whose delicate ears must not be offended, lest they withdraw their support. It is thus that the press is too generally regulated in our commercial towns, and managed as carefully as if it were under the direc tion of a royal police. Whip me such servility! I'd rather be a dog and bay the moon,' and throw my types into the river, and jump in after them myself, than be an editorial slave to such men."

Mr. Niles speaks of counterfeit notes. In the year 1835 there were no less than between twelve and thirteen hundred different kinds of these notes in circulation, and this was before the "shin-plaister"

system commenced-now it is impossible to know how many there are. Of this I do not complain, because I know that a counterfeit note is as good as the genuine notes; indeed, as Ex-president Adams says, the bankers are all counterfeiters together-and that is the truth, if ever the truth was spoken. From Mr. Niles we find that, more than twenty years back, the bankers possessed power enough to prevent the publication of their own disgraceful acts; and that, if a man did not in all things obey them, "the state of the case was such, that suspicion would light upon him; and to be suspected of being suspicious,' by the bankers, was certain ruin." Well might the writer say that he would rather be a dog than a slave to such men. He does not, however, treat the matter in all respects in the way I think it ought to be treated: he seems to find fault with the system because it is abused. This is too common a way of looking at the thing, which is of itself, abused or not, the greatest abuse that ever was suffered to exist. As well might he say that highway robbing, house-breaking, or any other kind of robbing, would be very well, if it were not for their abuses. Is it possible, too, for such a contrivance ever to have been "designed for great and noble purposes?" No; it was designed for the same purpose as the loaded dice were designed, and so superior is it to them, that it cheats the world out of more in a single day than they have ever done since the petty blacklegs first invented them.

Talk of abuses! Why, when they go on the most in order, then their effects are the most disastrous. If we take the most favourable and charitable view of them, we shall find that they are of the worst description of licensed gamblers, who, having the law-making power in their own hands, license themselves, force us, whether we will or not, to come to their table and play with their cards. Such are the advantages they possess over all other gamblers. When I hear of their breaking, instead of considering that a calamity, I should consider it, if no more were to come in their places, the greatest blessing that could be bestowed on the country; and, if ever a public thanksgiving was proper, it certainly would be so on such an occasion. Why, Sir, it is impossible for me to notice a thousandth part of their vile deeds that are known to the public-to say nothing of those that cannot be known; but I trust I can notice enough to satisfy you that they are all that I say of them, if you will read the following, which I take from an American paper of 1837:

:

Lumberman's BANK.-From investigation this bank appears to have made a pretty fair exhibition of rottenness at the core. A meeting has been held at Jamestown, in this State, at which an exposé of the affairs of the bank was made, and the following, among other resolutions, passed

"Resolved, That it is with feeling of shame and regret that we find the statement of the committee appointed to call the meeting literally true, that fraud, corruption, and perjury, on the part of individuals who have hitherto possessed our confidence and respect, are the prominent causes of its failure.

t Resolved, That, deeply as we deplore the circumstances that render it necessary for us to publicly censure the motives or conduct of our fellow-citizens, yet we find ourselves called upon, by the duty we owe to ourselves, our country, and our God, to expose and condemn so vile an attempt to defraud and plunder the community of their property and their rights."

And in the same paper we have the proceedings of another wretched den, which proceedings are as follow :

"The Boston Atlas, of Friday, contains the report of a joint special committee of the legislature, appointed to examine into the doings of the Franklin Bank. The report is too long to transfer to our columns, but we give below an abstract of it. The Atlas says 'The institution appears to have been rotten to the core, and the profligacy and corruption displayed in its management almost exceeds belief.' The people can now see what there was in the pet bank system to render it so great a favourite with a certain class of politicians. The Franklin Bank and the Lafayette appear to have been linked together in their operations, by which they have succeeded in robbing the public of large sums of money; and both of them were wholly or in part controlled by persons intimately connected with officers of the general government. The president of one of these banks, and the cashier of the other, are both brothers-inlaw of Mr. Secretary Woodbury. These two banks obtained seventyfour thousand dollars of the government deposits, which they shared between them. This money was loaned out to various individuals of the party on very flimsy security-most of it falling into the hands of the directors, who are all thorough-going loco-focos.

"The name of F. O. J. Smith occupies a conspicuous place in the report of the committee. Mr. Smith, it appears, soon after the bank had received the government deposits, applied for a loan of fourteen thousand dollars in specie, with the understanding that it should be returned as soon as an examination of it should be concluded in a bank which he was about starting at Westbrook, Me. The Franklin Bank has also furnished funds for the redemption of the bills of the Westbrook Bank, to the amount of twelve thousand dollars. It is worthy of remark that all the individuals implicated in the transactions of this bank are warm supporters of the administration, and some of them are officeholders under government.