Page:Life of Henry Clay (Schurz; v. 2).djvu/125

Rh To the end of moderating the tendency to speculative enterprise, which is always apt to run into excess, nothing would have been more desirable than that the financial policy of the government should be even more than ordinarily circumspect and conservative. But it was just then that the government withdrew its funds from the United States Bank, an institution under a comparatively cautious management, naturally inclined to serve by preference the legitimate business of the country, and turned over the deposits to a number of favored state banks. But not only that. In order to reconcile the people to the change, the Secretary of the Treasury expressly admonished those “pet banks” to “afford increased facilities to commerce,” and to expand their “accommodations to individuals,” by means of the public money, — in other words, to lend out the public funds as freely as possible. This, of course, the deposit banks did with zest, by no means confining their favors to the “merchants engaged in foreign trade,” whom the Secretary had especially commended to them. As the public debt became extinguished and the treasury surplus grew in consequence, the amount of public money deposited in the “pet banks” and available for the “accommodation of individuals” increased rapidly. The United States Bank, too, was drawn into the whirl. From August, 1833, to June, 1834, the bank had contracted its loans, in part probably for the purpose of creating the impression that the war made upon it by the admin-