Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/390

 This committee introduced a bill which was passed, December 23, 1840, to repeal the act of December 21, 1839, for absorbing into the Central Bank the stock owned by the State in other banks, and to provide for an issue of bonds of the State to the amount of $1 million in sums not less than $5 each, redeemable in five years or sooner, bearing eight per cent. interest, with which to redeem the notes of the Central Bank, and pay the excess of the appropriations over what the Central Bank could properly pay. These bonds were to be a debt of the Central Bank, to the cancellation of which its assets were to be applied as fast as they could be realized. Any one who held Central Bank notes to the amount of $5 or more might obtain these bonds in exchange for them; but all which were brought in by any one person within a week, up to $500, were to be redeemed in one bond. The stock owned by the State in the Bank of the State and the Bank of Augusta was to be sold not below 90, by the Central Bank, in order, with the proceeds, to pay its debt to the Phoenix Bank of New York.

The appropriation bill of the same day ordered the Central Bank to provide the means to cash the treasury warrants outstanding.

During the summer of 1841 the Central Bank and a number of others failed. The substance had all been eaten out of the Central Bank by the measures which the Legislature had adopted during the last four years; that is to say, by the attempt of the State to live on it. In July Gouge reported:

"The Bank of Darien is now 'broken to all intents and purposes.'" The amount of its issues was uncertain and in fact unknown. In the same month it was reported: "The Chattahoochee Railroad Bank of Georgia which has just closed its doors is said by the "Jeffersonian," published at West Point, Ga., to have been a stupenduous fraud. The whole country is flooded with its issues amounting to millions, and yet it never had ten thousand dollars of specie in its vault. Its nominal capital was $3 millions, but it is averred that three million cents were never paid in. The very first step in obtaining its charter was a fraud on the Legislature, as the making of a road was never in serious contemplation." Now it is said to have failed. As specie payments were suspended how could it fail? "There is scarcely a man or a woman in that part of the State who has any bills at all but has most of them on this bank."

In connection with these difficulties a custom was introduced which became somewhat famous as the "Macon specific." Prices were set in specie and, if notes were offered, they were taken at their quotation.

The Bank of the State of Georgia avoided with considerable difficulty a suspension in 1841. There was a defalcation in the branch at Macon by two prominent officers, and a falsification of the note issue to the extent of more than $50,000. The bank complained of the oppression of specie-paying banks due to the extensive circulation of the notes of the non-specie-paying banks. In the following year these complaints were renewed. The