Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/368

 property had been sacrificed for the interests of the Bank. He only paid what he did pay for the sake of peace, and amongst the different securities which he offered, the Bank chose the Texan bonds. In a second letter, he declares that the Bank was sound and prosperous when he left it. He is not to blame, he says, that stocks have fallen within two years. He quotes a letter of Cowperthwaite to him, in which all subsequent calamities are traced to the premature resumption in 1838, but Biddle attributes the ruin of the Bank to the bill transaction in August, 1839, and the fatal attempt to resume in 1841. He says that the Court had decided that the Bank charter could not be forfeited for non-payment of specie, and that the Bank ought not to have obeyed the Legislature. All the banks ought to have withheld the $800,000 loan from the State, in January, 1841, unless it would extend the suspension. That is to say, he still adhered to the old policy of bluff and bounce which had been pursued by the Bank during the whole period of the State charter. In his third letter, he enlarges upon the rivalry of the Schuylkill Navigation Company and the hostile animus of the Committee, and at last runs off into personalities. In a fourth letter he denied favoritism to Thomas Biddle. In a fifth he defended Jaudon, and in a sixth, he said that all the items of account which the Committee say are not explained were passed by the directors. He tried to strip himself of responsibility for the Bank, and to answer only for his own person, but he had been so long identified with the Bank that he could not persuade the public to take this view.

The letters written by Biddle for the sake of influencing public opinion would make a large collection. In respect to all those which were written after 1836, we have the means of knowing that he was not honest and sincere. He was trying to deceive by false reasons, artful pretenses, and made-up excuses. The impression we gain from these letters we cannot but carry back to the earlier part of the history, and ask ourselves, when we feel disposed to believe that he has made out his case, whether we are not the victims of his deceit?

Gallatin said that the United States Bank had been, since 1837, the chief cause of suspension and of delay in resuming. "In every respect it has been a public nuisance." "The mismanagement and gross neglect which could, in a few years, devour two-thirds of a capital of $35 millions are incomprehensible, and have no parallel in the history of banks." "How, after so many violations of its charter, its existence has been so long protracted is indeed unintelligible." There seems to have been some hope as late as April or May that the Bank could be revived, but suits began to multiply against it. The total number which were begun from January to September was about one hundred and eighty. Over one hundred judgments were obtained against it, some for $100, some for $100,000. In May, another attempt was made to bring about a forfeiture of its charter on account