and exchanged for gold or silver, without the least ceremony or difficulty."

As to the ceremony, it is now indescribable; a further account of which I have given in another letter. If your note be for five dollars, and the bank has got as much in its vaults, by giving it as a fee to a lawyer you may perhaps recover it; after half a dozen hearings before a magistrate, and after having been abused by a bank lawyer, and called everything that the vile slanderer can rake together-after this and a thousand other "ceremonies," if you can find a magistrate that is not lost to all shame, and if your note be for five dollars, mind, you may get it; but, if it be for above five dollars, then there is no hope whatever. A friend of mine, a poor man, sued the United States Bank in May last, for the payment of a ten-dollar note. He got judgment against the bankers; but they carried it to a higher court!! where it now remains, and the man's lawyer tells him that they can keep it there as long as they please. So that he has been deprived of the use of his ten dollars for nine months already, and has his own lawyer to pay besides, together with loss of time, and so on. These are only a part of the ceremonies and difficulties, as I have already shown. You are, no doubt, as much surprised at the ignorance of Paine, in relation to banks, as he affected to be at the ignorance of the committee when they foretold all these things. You use his language, and ask if it is possible for that man to have been so ignorant as not to have known that that bank was conceived in sin; and that, if it were not killed in its infancy, it would cover the face of the country with evil? So prolific are banks, that in fifty years they have increased from one to one thousand!! besides the myriads of shin-plaster shops, a sort of bastard litter, and of the corporations of every kind-all the lineal descendants of that bank which was so highly approved of by this author of "Common Sense," of "The Rights of Man," and, above all things, "The Age of Reason."

I remain yours most respectfully,

THOMAS BROTHERS.

P.S. You will notice that Paine says, that the legislators cannot break contracts made by former legislators; but, when it serves his purpose to do so, he tells us that no assembly can even engage that the next assembly shall receive their notes in payment of taxes!!" What will our city and country authorites think of this? They, who are possessed of inferior powers, have engaged that their unlawful emission of, perhaps, a million of dollars, for sums, some of them as low as five-cent notes, shall be redeemed by their successors!!!—And this pestilential rubbish, the sight of which, the touch of which, nor the

smell of which, cannot be endured by a decent person, is to be held by us, according to Paine, by the dignified title of "hostage!!" until exchanged for hard money. How long it will be before it is ransomed, and restored to the embraces of its unhappy progenitors, no one seems to have the least idea.

He recommends the combining the security of the government and the bank into one, and says the bank-notes would then be doubly secured; though before he told us "that one assembly cannot even engage that the next assembly shall receive its notes in payment of taxes!!" If such a union would double the security, the single security must have been of a very flimsy nature.

T. B.

ON THE CHARACTER OF STEPHEN GIRARD, THE BANKER-THE MISAPPROPRIATION OF HIS MUNIFICENT CHARITABLE BEQUESTS-CHARACTER OF THE AMERICAN REPUBLICANS.

To Thomas Brothers's Sons.

MY DEAR BOYS,

Philadelphia, May 25, 1838. You remember, when you were little boys, seeing an ill-favoured old man, with only one eye, in an old gig, drawn by an old grey horse, pass by our door two or three times every day. The boys, you know, used to halloo after him, and in derision call him " Old Uncle Steve;" that man was Stephen Girard, the great banker, and now the subject of these remarks, who amassed, nobody exactly knows how, ten millions of dollars, the greater part of which he has left for the support of orphans. His life has been written by one of his clerks, whose father was the cashier of his bank.

The writer endeavours to make the character of the creature as little objectionable as possible, and says, in his preface, that he has occasionally softened or suppressed the truth. If he had told the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, (notwithstanding his will) it would have been found that such a lump of iniquity had never before been moulded into the human shape. But the mouths of the "authorities" were watering at the luscious picking that they saw before them; and they, grateful souls! made it the interest of the newspaper-press to speak well of their benefactor: by this means thousands were got together to mourn!! at his funeral. At that time the truth would have been unpopular; and popularity is with us always the first and the only thing to be considered. How often we hear men of the first standing in society agree that a measure is right, just, and founded in truth; but, say they, it is unpopular, and therefore must not be advocated! Similar opinions, beyond all doubt, guided the writer of this Life of Girard. I could tell strange and most unnatural stories about the miser, were I to make use of verbal reports, a thing that you will observe I never make a point of doing; but, on the contrary, always give you chapter and verse: so that, if there be any errors, they belong to others and not to me. I shall therefore, in this case, be satisfied with the information afforded me by the biographer, who has been obliged to admit that all was not as it should be: he knew that to attempt to hide the whole of the sins of the miser, would be as ridiculous as it would be to attempt to cover the sun with a blanket. So he admitted a little of that which we all before knew. This bio

graphy is a strange medley, as everything must be that comes from a man that dares not please God for fear of offending mam

the

mon.

pen of

The book itself would scarcely be worth noticing, were it not held up to the people of the United States as the production of a man of extraordinary talent, and were not the subject of it represented as a bright example, by which the youth of the country ought to direct their steps in their progress through life. This "exemplary, this illustrious individual!" left an enormous sum of money behind him, which he principally bequeathed to "charitable purposes." Notwithstanding this circumstance, however, which, after all, was only giving that which he could not take away, I will prove to you that a more despicable character never existed; and having a truly fatherly affection for you, I call upon you, my dear sons, to shun the example of such a man, as you would shun Satan himself, who, if he were in person to come here, and put money into the pockets of the idolizers of the miser they would, with all the warmth that their cold souls possess, publicly worship him also, and call upon the youth of their country to listen to their exhortations. We are told by the idolizers, that Philadelphia is, in a high degree, indebted to this grinding, avaricious, miserable, old creature, for what he has left behind: and

66

What has he left behind?

Oh cursed lust of gold! for thy sake

The fool threw up his interest in both worlds;

First starved in this, then damn'd in that to come."

Yet they tell us, further, that the "great globe itself, and all that it inherits," will eventually be benefited by this "gripus, the meanest of mankind," who made, if ever man did make, yellow dirt the passion of his life."

I will take from his life a few unfavourable extracts, after reading of which you will not be able to see the possibility of even an American writer being talented enough to finally make this wretched miser and base character into a demi-god and a "ministering angel." The writer tells us that "sympathy, feeling, friendship, pity, love, and commiseration, were emotions that never ruffled the equanimity of Girard's mind Friends, relations, old companions, confidental agents, or the general family of mankind, might sicken and die around him, and he would not part with a particle of his gold to relieve and save one among them, but stood unmoved, like the eternal statue of Death, with the waves of human misery beating at his feet. Misery and Want might groan in their humble cells, and the big tear of woe blind the eye-but he heard and saw them not when his gold was asked. Pity might plead, but Ambition had left no sense open to her prayers: his pity, his charity,

his benevolence, were all to descend to posterity, in order that the act which relieved their want and succoured their woe might at the same time consecrate him to fame. When he gave in his life-time, it was to public institutions, who enrolled his name in letters of gold in the imperishable catalogue of their benefactors.

66

*

* I am still inclined to doubt whether Stephen Girard ever felt the force of the feeling, or properly conceived the relation, which the word friend expresses. The whole course of his life refutes the hypothesis of his being accessible to such an emotion.

*

Total destitution of sympathy, feeling, and refinement, was peculiar to the organization of Mr. Girard. * * * It was evident to me that he placed no more estimate upon men than upon so many machines or instruments by which to acquire money; * * * to appeal to his feelings or his sympathies was absolute folly. Great numbers thought they had in Mr. Girard a sincere friend; but Mr. Girard knew no more of what formed friendship between men than he did of what constituted friendship between one bale of merchandize and another.

* *

*

Girard was ambitious of riches, and every other consideration faded away before his eyes into indistinct air.

"Having nothing of the amiable feelings in his composition, he never consulted the feelings of others, or reckoned how much he shocked their sensibility, so that he gained their money or saved himself from an expenditure. Every step he made in his life was a sort of pitched battle to conquer property, and, so that he gained the victory, he cared very little who were killed or wounded.

66 * * * * It has been alleged, against his sense of gratitude as well as charity, that he did not bequeath something to the man who drove his chair; and who, on more that one occasion, saved his life. It would, indeed, have exhibited a most wonderful anomaly of character had Girard ever been noted for gratitude, or a sense of service rendered. He, no doubt, included all the benefits his coachman could possibly do him in the amount of his monthly wages.

66 * * * * It is not easy to vindicate an expedient to which he resorted for profit. He, at one period of his eventful life, sold salt by the bushel, and, conceiving that his measure of half-bushel was too large, he determined to regulate or re-adjust it himself: for this purpose he took a half-gallon liquid measure, and, repairing to the wharf, he deposited the requisite number of gallons into his half-bushel; and then, drawing a chalk-line round the water-mark, he found it was too large by an inch, or more, when he went to a neighbouring cooper's shop, and, borrowing a saw for the purpose, reduced the measure of his halfbushel, accordingly, to what he conceived it ought to be. This fact