Page:Life and Select Literary Remains of Sam Houston of Texas (1884).djvu/177

Rh Treasury to refuse them in payment of the bank bonus. The eighteen months from the date of the act, within which time payment could be made, were about to expire. This was not all; before the expiration of the eighteen months President Houston, in presence of several gentlemen, formally committed to the flames the certificate that had been sent him of a share in the bank. As shares were openly sold, he could have put in his pocket for his certificate of share $20,000. But this hydra-headed monster of the class of gigantic swindles, like Law's Mississippi scheme and the more recent Credit Mobilier, was by Houston's sagacity, honesty, and firmness crushed in its embryo state. If room permitted, it would be a curious study to describe the influences brought to bear on Houston to permit the bonus to be paid in treasury notes, and thus the bank to go into operation. He was inflexible, and the people were saved from a huge corporation which would have enveloped in its folds and crushed every enterprise, and forbid competition outside of the shareholders of the bank. It would be unjust to Henry Smith to omit to mention that in this matter he was in full accord with President Houston. But Houston was the rock of resistance. Persons at this day can not easily appreciate the magnitude of this bank enterprise. It may help their imagination to be informed that three of the eight shares were sold in New York for merchandise to the amount of $60,000.

The treasury notes were, on the whole, a decided success. As already stated, they were at par, or nearly so, with gold and silver, and equal in current value with bills of banks in the United States. This rare quality for paper not instantly redeemable, enjoyed by the treasury notes, may be attributed mainly to the following causes. The known resources of Texas—the issue of notes being limited to an amount, in Houston's language, "required to meet the actual necessities of a circulating medium "—their issue limited to payment of civil services—not being reissuable, but canceled on being paid into the treasury—these were safeguards against the country being flooded with these notes. And to these should be added General Houston's well-known resolute opposition to buccaneering expeditions against Mexico, and quixotic hunts of Indians to chase them from lands which our scant population rendered it impossible for us to occupy.

The success of the star money thus protected seems to have encouraged Congress to attempt a larger enjoyment of the good. Accordingly, in May, 1838, Congress passed acts for the issue of another million of treasury notes, and authorizing their reissue after having been paid into the treasury, and making appropriations of them for all sorts of public expenditure. Unlike the star