Page:A History of Banking in the United States.djvu/88

 no doubt because there was a double transaction in converting the currency obtained, and bringing home the proceeds in specie or in government securities.

The Treasury, as we have seen, after the expiration of the charter of the Bank of the United States, received duties in the bank notes of the port at which the goods were entered. Consequently there was a further advantage to import commodities at the port of entry where the currency was most depreciated. Hence Philadelphia and Baltimore enjoyed a period of great apparent prosperity, for, in July, 1815, New York paper was at 14 per cent. discount, and Baltimore paper at 16 per cent. discount, compared with Boston paper or silver. The discount on southern and western paper, at that time, was small.

The government suffered the greatest loss and embarrassment from the derangement of the currency. Boston was the money market of the country, and there were heavy disbursements there, which must all be made at specie par; but there was no revenue there, all being obtained further south in depreciated notes. If any one had payments to make at Boston to the Treasury, he bought notes of the suspended banks to the southward with which to do it. Hence Secretary Crawford stated that "until the resumption of specie payments in the early part of 1817, treasury notes, and the notes of the banks which had suspended payment, formed the great mass of circulation in the eastern parts of the Union. Specie, or the notes of banks which continued to pay specie, formed no part of the receipts of the government in Boston, and the districts east of that town, until about the close of the year 1816."

June 15, 1815, the Secretary of the Treasury gave notice that he would not receive the notes of any non-specie paying banks which did not take treasury notes at par with their own notes. If the notes of any bank stood higher than treasury notes, it refused to receive the latter at par. Such banks were in general the creditor banks, and the best ones, and the Secretary's rule led him to refuse their notes while he accepied those of the worse banks. August 15th he published a list of the banks whose notes he would no longer receive. He said that the proposition which he had made to the banks had been generally acceded to by them "with the exception of those which pay their own notes on demand, in gold or silver, and those who are specified in the subjoined list." The specie paying banks of New England so far as they received treasury notes, suffered for it, and were afterwards petitioners for redress.

Advertisements were made by the Secretary for subscriptions to a public loan, March 10th, the object of which was to fund treasury notes and get a "supply of the local currencies of different places in some proportion to the probable amount of the local demand." Up to April 19th, he received no bids over 89, and some as low as 75. "Upon this experiment," he says, in his