Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/229

 extended by drawing and re-drawing. Curtailments were ordered in the Mississippi Valley October 7, 1831. They were interpreted by Benton as arbitrary inflictions for political effect. All through the winter, Biddle was writing to the southern and western branches to contract their loans and pay to New York and Philadelphia, so as to strengthen the Bank for a payment on the public debt which was to be made in April. He could not succeed in making the western branches pay, and was therefore forced to impose a curtailment on the eastern branches. The following table shows this relation of things:

In such a state of things it was impossible for Biddle to see with equanimity a debt which bore only three per cent. interest paid off at one hundred when the market rate was seven or eight per cent. Even before he received notice that the three per cents were to be paid, he tried to negotiate with Ludlow, the representative of a large number of English holders of the three per cents for the purchase of the same. Ludlow had not power to sell. Having obtained a postponement until October, under the conditions above mentioned, the Bank sent Gen. Cadwallader to England to negotiate a postponement for a year. The bondholders were to take the Bank as their debtor instead of the United States. The Barings negotiated this extension with such of the bondholders as were willing, but the administration raised loud objection to an arrangement by which the securities of the United States would remain outstanding after they had been paid.

On the 11th of October a New York newspaper published an account of the arrangement which the Bank had made with the Barings in regard to the three per cents, which was to have been kept secret. The Barings had bought $1,798,597, and had extended $2,376,481. October 15th Biddle repudiated the contract, because under it the Bank would become a purchaser of public stocks. He proposed to credit the extended stock to its holders on the books of the Bank, and to pay for that which the Barings had bought when government should redeem it, or to hold the sum to the credit of the Barings at four per cent.

In fact the sinking fund was not made as good on the first of October as it would have been if the three per cents had been paid on July 1st, although the Bank had promised that it should be made so, as one of the stipulations when they were extended.

These matters and their complications were what weakened the Bank in its defense against its enemies, and gave them the opening for further attacks upon it. They also entailed one difficulty upon another in the next years.