Page:United States Statutes at Large Volume 5.djvu/486



banks shall, each for itself, from and after the passage of this act, resume and continue the payment of all its notes and specie liabilities in specie, on demand; and each and every of said banks failing to resume specie payments, as aforesaid, within ten days after the passage of this act, or having resumed specie payments, again suspending or refusing to pay any of its notes or other specie liabilities in specie, when legally demanded, or shall pay out or lend out, after the first day of March next, the notes of any suspended bank, or any paper currency whatever which is not equivalent to gold and silver, shall, in the first case, be excluded from all participation in the privileges and provisions of this act; and, in the second case, shall, ipso facto, forfeit all benefit and privilege granted by it; and it shall be the duty of the district attorney of the United States for the District of Columbia, upon information lodged with him of any such suspension or refusal to pay in specie by any of said banks, to take forthwith the necessary and proper legal steps to enforce the forfeiture hereby provided for such refusal or suspension, and to compel every such delinquent bank to proceed to wind up its concerns, under, and agreeably to, the provisions of the act of Congress entitled “,” approved the third day of July, in the year eighteen hundred and forty.

. And be it further enacted, That each and every of said banks shall be, and they are hereby, expressly prohibited from making any new loan or loans whatever, upon a pledge of stock in said bank as security for the repayment of said loan; and they are hereby required, upon all loans now existing upon any such pledge of stock, to require and exact, before any renewal or extension of any such stock loan shall be granted, other sufficient security for the same, in the form, and to the extent usual in said banks upon making ordinary loans. And the president and directors of each of said banks are hereby made individually liable to all persons concerned, for the whole amount of any loan or loans hereafter made or renewed contrary to the aforegoing provisions, by them, or any of them, or with their consent, from the funds of any of said banks; and the cashier of each of said banks shall keep a regular record of the attendance of the president and each director at every meeting of the board of directors of the bank of which he is cashier; and every president and director who shall be present at any meeting at which any loan upon a pledge of stock, as aforesaid, shall be made or extended, shall be deemed to have consented to the same, unless he shall at that meeting enter his protest, in writing, against said loan on the minutes of their proceedings.

. And be it further enacted, That in each and every of said banks, all loans now existing to any president, cashier, director, or other officer, either as principal or security, to a greater amount than ten thousand dollars, shall be regularly curtailed or reduced, at the rate of at least twenty-five per cent. or one fourth of the whole amount, annually, in a due proportion at each renewal at the expiration of ninety days successively, until the sum of such loan shall, in no instance, exceed the amount of ten thousand dollars aforesaid. And no new loan or loans shall hereafter, on any pretence whatever, be made to any president, cashier, director, or other officer, either as principal or security, to a greater amount in the whole including the unpaid balances of former loans than ten thousand dollars; and the same penalties, liabilities, and presumptions shall, in every case of a loan made contrary to the spirit, intent, and meaning of this section, attach to the president and directors of the bank by which said loan shall be made, as is provided in the preceding section, in the case of loans upon a pledge of the stock of the bank making the same.

. And be it further enacted, That each and every of said banks