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Thus it is apparent, that, the circulation of the State Banks is about ten times greater than their specie, and that, consequently, they would be unable to withstand any run which might drain them, and would be compelled to contract their issues, diminish greatly the circulation, and throw the business operations of the whole country into utter confusion, depreciating the value of property, in proportion to the reduction of the currency. This weakness of the State Banks is apparent from their own exhibitions; but their statements, the most favourable their circumstances will admit, are not entitled to implicit confidence, as may be gathered from the late failures of some, and the notorious shifts of others, to make up accounts for settling or reporting days.

This weakness has a constant tendency to increase, from the disposition of the State Banks to over issues. This inclination is repressible, only by a power perpetually and uniformly active, which, like gravity in the solar system, shall keep each planet in its orbit. This power is found in the Bank of the United States, which is not only sound in itself, having less than two dollars of outstanding notes for one dollar of specie at command, but is the cause that utter rottenness does not pervade a large majority of the State Banks. This important fact was admitted by Mr. Taney himself, in a letter to the Committee of Ways and Means of the House of Representatives. But with a logic as perverse as the case in which it is employed, he argues, that if the Bank of the United States produces soundness in the State Banks, the object of its creation has been attained; and that, therefore, it may be dismissed as useless;-and that if it have not rendered the circulating medium safe, it has failed in itss-purpose. With equal propriety, it may be said, that the power of gravity having, for thousands of years, preserved the order of the universe, may be annihilated, and the order be preserved. The presence of both, in their respective places, is indispensable. Whilst the Bank of the United States is preserved, all other Banks, claiming to be solvent, must keep their paper at par with specie. When that Bank shall be extinguished, the mutual indulgence of the monied institutions will remove this restraint, and a drain of specie from the country will result in the suspension of specie payments.

The Secretary admits the necessity of preserving the Bank, if the present currency be in a sound state; but he denies the soundness of the currency. On this subject he may be safely left at issue, with all the political economists of the country,

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the Committees of both Houses of Congress, and, what is quite as much to the purpose, with every individual of the community, who, having the note of any Bank in credit, can obtain specie therefor, in all the markets of the Union, at a rate less than the transportation of specie would cost.

423. But if the currency were not perfect, if the abun dance of paper of small denominations limited the use of silver; if mistaken legislation had expelled gold from circulation; these were evils which the good sense of the country, before the attack upon the Bank, had engaged to remedy. Already, without the promptings of the General Government, had the States commenced the suppression of small notes; and so fast as the sense of the true interests of the people prevails over the interests of the Banks, this suppression will be extended. Beyond this, no effort of the General Government, as proposed by the Secretary, can avail. For though it may possibly force the State Banks, in its service, say, one hundred, to disuse notes, under a designated amount, it will have no influence over the remaining three hundred and fifty Banks, whose pernicious issues, unchecked by the regulating power, would be enlarged with the decrease of competition. Already had the commercial community called for the interference of the Legislature; and had the President and his Secretary of the Treasury been with the pre-adamites, the measures which have been lately adopted, for retaining gold in the country, would have been pursued.

But suppose the mean offered to improve the currency be made efficient, by the co-operation of the States; a measure extremely problematical; would it not be more efficient if applied through the United States Bank? As that institution acts simultaneously and uniformly in all parts of the Union, can we doubt, the effect would be more prompt and universal. But suppose the Government can restrain the issue of the Banks in its employ; what shall compensate for the unre.strained issues of all other Banks which must ensure the dissolution of the United States Bank?

Does not the onward course of things tend, directly, to the state of 1816? Of late, new Banks have been established, in the several States, with aggregate capitals amounting to 43 millions of dollars, and multitudes of applications are daily presented to the State Legislatures for new charters. Each of these Banks will strive to extend its circulation, and will endeavour to avoid specie payments. The more rotten and

worthless they may be, the more strenuous will be their efforts for this purpose.

424. But whence, does the Executive derive the right, so boldly assumed, of providing the country with a currency whether paper or metalic? The assumption was in every point of view illegal-so palpably illegal, that the partisans of the administration did not venture to support it before Congress.

It is an imputation upon the Congress of 1816, to suppose, that, they intended to authorize the Secretary of the Treasury to use any means for changing the currency. Yet he avows this intention; to change it too, in opposition to the provision made by Congress in regard to it. He proposed to effect this by compelling the Bank of the United States to cease lending, and by enabling the deposit Banks to lend; by circumscribing the circulation of the notes of the one, and enlarging the circulation of the notes of the other; by compelling them all to give him, indirectly, the management of the Banks, without the warrant of law, and to surrender it themselves, contrary to the laws, by which they are, exclusively, entitled to it. No Congress could, and, therefore, no Congress, should be presumed to, have given the Secretary such powers. It would have been a delegation of the highest powers of legislation under the form of ministerial agency. No power requires more circumspection in its use than that for regulating the currency. The currency is the measure of value of every man's property, of his contracts, of the indemnity for the breach of them, and of the revenue of the country; and without a due adjustment of it, it is impossible to distribute in equal proportion among the citizens, either the burdens or advantages of civil society. A deranged currency deranges every institution of the country that has relation to property. It gives a premium to fraud, and strips honest labour of its scanty earnings, by paying to it half of its just recompense, in the false and counterfeit name of the whole. Yet this power the Secretary claimed by delegation from the representatives of the people, and exercised it with consequences which spread in a wave of destruction over the whole country.

425. But suppose a league of the Treasury Banks should succeed in establishing their credit, so as to give general currency to the paper, which past experience and sound reason, utterly, forbid us to expect, will not they, by loans and exchanges, gain the same power over the business of the coun

try which is charged as dangerous in the Bank of the United States? Should this power be attained and be abused, Congress can apply no remedy, for, it has no power over them nor their charters. Should the scheme succeed, it will be desirable to perpetuate it. But as the dependence of the charters of most of the Banks is upon the States in which they, respectively are, it will be necessary to propitiate the State Legislatures, and to this end, an undue influence of the Gen.eral Government must be employed. We have heard much of consolidation; much of the danger of merging the independence of the States in the Federal Government. It is scarce possible to devise a plan, more adapted to this purpose, than that proposed by the Secretary. Give the Executive power to confer favours or numerous banking institutions, all closely connected with the State Governments, and there will be so many centripetal forces, drawing, by the resistless influence of pecuniary interest, the independence of the States into the vortex of Federal control.

There is yet another result of this operation, which we have touched, but which deserves further notice. It is the dependence and subservience of the State Banks, selected by the Secretary, upon the Government,-upon the party. To effect this we have just reason to believe is the true motive of the war on the Bank. The contracts of the Secretary with them, put them wholly at his mercy; making them the vassals of the administration; enabling it, through them, to operate upon the stockholders and their debtors. That such use will be made of them cannot be doubted, after the use made by the Treasury, of drafts upon the Bank of the United States to support the Treasury Banks.

An attempt was made to consider these drafts, for two millions three hundred thousand dollars, as mere transfers, as directions, from the Treasury Department to the Bank, to send a particular sum of public money from one place to another, for the public, not private use, as drafts designed to change the position, not the custody of the public money. But the Secretary himself, in his report to the Senate of the 30th November, put the true impress upon the transaction; declaring that, "he had transferred money, in some instances, from the Bank of the United States, to the selected Banks, in order to enable them to defend the community against the unwarantable attempts (attempts never made, every Bank bearing testimony to the unexpected forbearance) of the Bank of the

United States, to produce a state of general embarrassment and distress."

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Defender of the community! Protector of the people! When, and, how, were, attributes like these, given to the Secretary of the Treasury? By what law? If the administration can, under pretence of protecting the people, assunié, unrebuked, unpunished, to loan, to individuals or corporate institutions, millions of their money, it will not be long before we shall have given, the protection of the people, as voucher for the illegal expenditure of millions. Well may it be said "that the inevitable tendency of power is its own enlargement.' These drafts, informally and illegally framed and sanctioned, for money lawfully deposited in the treasury, were given, secrectly given, to cashiers, to be used at their discretion, upon contingencies affecting their institutions, of which they, alone, were judges, and which had no relation to the public service. What security existed against their abuse? What pledge against their illegal conversion to the use of the cashiers themselves? Had such conversion been made, no claim would have existed against the Banks under. their respective contracts, or against the sureties on the cashier's bonds. The Banks would not have been liable for money which they had not received, and the condition of the cash-iers' bonds embrace no such trust. Can it be for an instant doubted, that soulless institutions, whose constituency relieves them in a great measure from moral obligation, whose spring of action is pecuniary interest, receiving favours like these, the gratuitous loan of millions to defend their credit, will not be the ready, the remorseless, instruments of the power that fosters them? Can it be, that such institutions will not combine to make themselves, their stockholders, and their debtors, the partisans, the creatures of the administration, adding hundreds of thousands to the army of mercenaries which the newly established tenure of office has supplied to the Executive? It matters not, to our view of the case, that a portion, only, of these drafts were used, and the remainder returned to the treasury...

426. But, from elements such as these, we were to have, not only a sounder currency than that furnished by the Bank of the United States, but a hard money currency! When the peal of indignation swelled from every portion of the country against the injustice committed on the United States Bank, and the reasons concocted by the President and his Secretary were scouted as impudent and illusory, the ground

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