Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/178

 5, 1825, provided that all the banks under the law of February 23, 1816, should be re-invested with the shares which had been set off to the State, if they would pay the State two per cent. on their dividends from their organization until this time, and four per cent. on their dividends for the future, and concede to the State the right to tax them. During the next years these banks were in liquidation. An act of March 3, 1824, provided that the Treasurer might compound and settle all claims of the State against seven or eight of them. In 1831, twenty were reported broken, including our old acquaintances the Banks of New Philadelphia and Owl Creek.

.—January 8, 1818, interest at six per cent. was imposed on bank notes not paid on demand in specie. Any officer of the bank was to endorse the demand and refusal or be fined the amount of the note, and witnesses might be called in on whose testinony a justice of the peace should endorse.

The Vincennes Bank, acting as a bank of the State, became an object of suspicion and examination in 1821. A joint resolution provided for an investigation, to find out whether the mother bank had issued notes, payable by its branches, without their knowledge. At the following session, in December, the State Treasurer was directed to make a formal demand on that bank and its branches, for payment of their notes in the treasury. If payment was refused, he was to tender to the mother bank at Vincennes the said notes, in payment of the loans of the bank to the State. A week later, a joint resolution was adopted that a quo warranto should be brought against the bank for a violation of its charter and the laws, and that if judgment was obtained against the bank, the Governor should appoint three receivers to wind it up. In this suit the bank was found guilty on four points, each of which would work forfeiture. Its debts were more than the legal limit; it had made fraudulent over-issues which it could not redeem; it had made large profits while suspended; deposits left for safe-keeping had been embezzled.

The tide now seems to turn against the relief system. January 3, 1822, it was enacted that there should be no execution on replevin bonds. If seven year rents, on being offered for sale, do not bring enough to pay the debt, the land is to be sold. Replevin bonds are to date from the judgment and not from the sale on execution. The jury of freeholders is to consist of five. This last provision was declared unconstitutional. January 11th, the old territorial law was revived, which established a limited stay, varying from thirty days, on a debt of $6, up to one hundred and eighty days on a debt of over $100, and property taken on execution was to be sold for what it would bring.

In a report of the State Treasurer, January 13, 1825, there is returned amongst the liabilities of the State a sum due to the "United States, assignee of the Vincennes Bank," and payments on this account occur in