Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/226

 5.—Expansion of the circulation by $1.3 millions between September 1, 1831, and April 1, 1832, although the discounts had been reduced during the winter. The Bank was struggling already with the branch drafts, and this struggle produced the facts which were alleged. The majority found that the bank had only $9,640,000 in cash and cash securities to meet $42.6 millions in cash liabilities. Very few banks of the period could have made so good a showing.

6.—Failure of the Bank to serve the nation. The majority argued that as the duties were paid at New York and Philadelphia, and as drafts on those cities were always at a premium, the Bank gained by transferring these funds inland for the government. The minority ridiculed this as an annihilation of space, a means of making a thing worth more the further it was from where it was wanted.

7.—Mismanagement of the public deposits. The majority declare that the Bank ought to use its capital as a permanent fund and loan the public deposits on time, so that they would be repaid near the time when they would be required by government for the debt payment. How to manage the government deposits was already becoming a question of the first importance to the Bank and the public, but if the Bank had done what was here proposed, it would have carried to a maximum the disturbances in the money market which were actually produced by the semi-annual payments on the debt. Biddle's fashion of banking, consisting in adroit tactics, adjustments, and offsets, won its only important triumphs in smoothing over the effects on the money market of the public debt payments.

8.—Postponement of the payment of the three per cents. These bonds were issued in 1792 for the accrued interest on the revolutionary debt, and were to be paid at 100. The Secretary informed the Bank, March 24th, just before the Bank Committee was raised, that he should pay half the three per cents in July. Biddle hastened to Washington to secure a postponement, not, as he affirmed, for the sake of the Bank, but for three other reasons: first, nine million dollars duty bonds would be payable July 1, so that the merchants would be put to inconvenience if the debt payment fell at that time; second, a visitation of cholera was to be feared, which would derange industry, and the payment of the debt, with the recall of so much capital loaned to merchants, would add to the distress; third, a large amount of specie would go out of the country if these bonds were paid. This last argument the Committee criticised correctly, showing that no export of specie worth noticing would be occasioned. The most probable result would be that the capital would be re-invested in American securities. Louisiana was then contracting with the Barings a loan of seven million dollars. Nobody understood this better than Biddle. The readier is often amazed that Biddle should have dared to put out his plausible "