Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/356

 The issues of this bank were assailed as bills of credit, but the State Supreme Court held that, under Briscoe's case, "by which in this case this Court is bound, whatever may be its opinion to the contrary, the notes issued by the Bank of the State of Arkansas are not bills of credit within the meaning of the federal Constitution, and that the act incorporating the bank is constitutional." Referring to the cases of Craig and Briscoe, the Judge said: "Like Justice Story, we believe that the two cases stand on precisely the same ground and turn expressly on the same principle."

The two banks suspended in the fall of 1839. This was done not from necessity but from policy. The immediate means of the Bank of the State were $469,949 and its immediate liabilities not over $400,000. It suspended in order to expand and inflate. In fact the banks lent out to the clique in control all the specie and real funds which they ever obtained, once for all, and then stopped. The bank at Little Rock resumed for a while October 1, 1840, to the great displeasure of the other branches. It had nearly twice as much specie as notes out. At the following session a legislative Committee was appointed to investigate the banks. Resolutions were adopted expressing dissatisfaction with the Real Estate Bank for suspending, and the report of the president was declared to be "not the most intelligible and satisfactory." The report showed that the commissioners to sell the bonds for the bank sold $500,000 to the Secretary of the Treasury for the Smithsonian bequest, which had been imported into this country in specie. They paid $5,000 to a broker in Washington for negotiating the sale, and charged the same sum for themselves. They converted the money into southwestern paper, and pocketed the difference. They charged $28,394 for their expenses and services, and for considerations not stated loaned $8,5000 to certain individuals in New York.

More information was demanded in regard to specie, debts due to the bank, the amount of mortgage security to save the State from loss, etc. The Real Estate Bank paid the interest on the bonds issued for it until July, 1841, except on the Holford bonds, and on the cash received for a part of the same issue. December 5, 1842, the State appointed an agent to instruct and help the attorney of the Bank of the State in a suit aginst the North American Trust Company and its guarantors.