Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/227

 ." They were always apparently reckoned for the uninitiated public alone. It seems that his pen ought to have been arrested by the thought of this and that competent banker and financier who might also read the publication, see through it, and lower Biddle's credit on account of it. We have found no cases in which such effects were produced, but on this occasion the headstrong old man at Washington saw that Biddle's reasons were only pretexts. He made up his mind that the truth which they covered was that the bank was in great distress. He never altered that conviction afterwards, and his opinion was fateful for the Bank.

The friends of the Bank said that the explanations given under this head were good and sufficient: its enemies said that they were only specious pretexts; that the Bank was so weak as to need government support, the reason being that its receipts were in branch drafts while the payments on the debt must be made in current money. The Secretary agreed to defer payment of five million dollars of the three per cents, until October 1st, the Bank agreeing to pay the interest during the extension.

9.—Incomplete number of directors. Biddle was both government director and elected director, so that there were only twenty-four in all. This was because the appointment of government directors was often delayed in the Senate, or because the government director might be reappointed indefinitely while the others rotated. The stockholders elected him also, in order that he might always be eligible to the Presidency.

10.—Large expenditures for printing; $6,700 in 1830, $9,100 in 1831. From 1829, the date of Jackson's first attack, the Bank spent money on pamphlets and newspapers to influence public opinion in its favor.

11.—Large contingent expenditures. There was a contingent fund, the footings of which in 1832 were six million dollars, to sink the losses of the first few years, the bonus, premiums on public stocks bought, banking house, etc., etc. The suggestion was that this was a convenient place in which to hide corrupt expenditures, and that the fund was so large as to raise a suspicion that such were included in it.

12.—Loans to members of Congress in advance of appropriations. Adams objected to this as an evil practice. He said afterwards that the investigation into this point was dropped because it was found that a large number of Congressmen of both parties had had loans.

13.—Refusal to give a list of stockholders resident in Connecticut to the authorities of that State, so that it might collect taxes from them on their stock.

14.—Usurpation of the control of the Bank by the Exchange Committee of the Board of Directors to the exclusion of the other directors. This charge was denied.

In all this tedious catalogue of charges we find nothing but frivolous