RECHARTER OF THE DISTRICT BANKS--SPEECH OF MR. BENTON: THE PARTS OF
LOCAL AND TEMPORARY INTEREST OMITTED.
"Mr. Benton rose to oppose the passage of the bill, notwithstanding
it was at the third reading, and that it was not usual to continue
opposition, which seemed to be useless, at that late stage.
But there were occasions when he never took such things into
calculation, and when he continued to resist pernicious measures,
regardless of common usages, as long as the forms of parliamentary
proceeding would allow him to go on. Thus he had acted at the
passing of the United States Bank charter, in 1832; thus he did
at the passing of the resolution against President Jackson, in
1834; and thus he did at the passing of the famous land bill, at
the present session. He had continued to speak against all these
measures, long after speaking seemed to be of any avail; and,
far from regretting, he had reason to rejoice at the course that
he had pursued. The event proved him to be right; for all these
measures, though floated through this chamber upon the swelling
wave of a resistless and impatient majority, had quickly run their
brief career. Their day of triumph had been short. The bank charter
perished at the first general election; the condemnatory resolution
was received by the continent in a tempest of execration; and
the land bill, that last hope of expiring party, has dropped an
abortion from the Senate. It is dead even here, in this chamber,
where it originated--where it was once so omnipotent that, to speak
against it, was deemed by some to be an idle consumption of time,
and by others to be an unparliamentary demonstration against the
ascertained will of the House. Yet, that land bill is finished.
That brief candle is out. The Senate has revoked that bill; has
retracted, recanted, and sung its palinode over that unfortunate
conception. It has sent out a committee--an extraordinary committee
of nine--to devise some other scheme for dividing that same money
which the land bill divides! and, in doing so, the Senate has
authentically declared a change of opinion, and a revocation of its
sentiments in favor of that bill. Thus it has happened, in recent
and signal cases, that, by continuing the contest after the battle
seemed to be lost, the battle was in fact gained; and so it may be
again. These charters may yet be defeated; and whether they will
be or not, is nothing to me. I believe them to be wrong--greatly,
immeasurably wrong!--and shall continue to oppose them without
regard to calculations, or consequences, until the rules of
parliamentary proceeding shall put an end to the contest. Mr. B.
said he had moved for a select committee, at the commencement of
the session, to examine into the condition of these banks, and he
had done so with no other object than to endeavor to provide some
checks and guards for the security of the country against the abuses
and excesses of the paper system. The select committee had not been
raised. The standing Committee on the District of Columbia had been
charged with the subject; and, seeing that they had made a report
adverse to his opinions, and brought in a bill which he could not
sanction, it would be his part to act upon the meagre materials
which had been placed before the Senate and endeavor to accomplish
as a member of that body, what could have been attempted, with
better prospects of success, as a member of a committee which had
had the management of the subject.
"Mr. B. said he had wished to have been on a select committee for
the charter of these banks; he wished to have revived the idea of a
bank without circulation, and to have disconnected the government
from the banking of the district. He had failed in his attempt to
raise such a committee; and, as an individual member of the Senate,
he could now do no more than mention in debate the ideas which he
would have wished to have ripened into legislation through the
instrumentality of a committee.
"Mr. B. said he had demonstrated that no bank of circulation ought
to be authorized in this district; and, he would add, that none to
furnish currency, except of large notes, ought to be authorized
any where; yet what are we doing? We are breeding six little
corporations at a birth, to issue $2,250,000 of paper currency:
and on what terms? No bonus; no tax on the capital; none on the
circulation; no reduction of interest in lieu of bonus or tax;
no specie but what the stockholders please to put in; and no
liability on the part of the stockholders for a failure of these
corporations to redeem their notes and pay their debts. This is
what we are doing; and now let us see what burdens and taxes
these six corporations will impose upon the business part of the
community--the productive classes among which they are to be
perpetuated. First, there is the support of these six corporation
governments; for every bank must have a government, like a State
or kingdom; and the persons who administer these corporation
governments must be paid, and paid by the people, and that according
to the rates fixed by themselves and not by the people. Each of
these six banks must have its president, cashier, clerks, and
messengers; its notary public to protest notes; and its attorney
to bring suits. The aggregate salaries, fees, and perquisites, of
all these officers of the six banks will be the first tax on the
people. Next comes the profits to the stockholders. The nett profits
of banks are usually eight to ten per cent. at present; the gross
profits are several per cent. more; and the gross profits are what
the people pay. Assuming the gross profits to be twelve per cent.,
and the annual levy upon the community will be about $270,000. The
third loss to the community will be on the fluctuations of prices
of labor and property, and the rise and fall of stocks, from the
expansions and contractions of currency, produced by making money
plenty or scarce, as it suits the interest of the bank managers.
This item cannot be calculated and depends entirely upon the
moderation and consciences of the Neptunes who preside over the flux
and reflux of the paper ocean; and to whom all tides, whether of ebb
or flow, and all conditions of the sea, whether of calm or storm,
are equally welcome, equally auspicious, and equally productive.
Then come three other heads of loss to the community, and of profit
to the bank: loss of notes from wear and tear, counterfeits imposed
upon the people for good notes, and good notes rejected by the banks
for counterfeits; and then the loss to the holders from the stoppage
and failure of banks, and the shaving in of notes and stocks. Such
are the burdens and taxes to be imposed upon the people to give
them a paper currency, when, if the paper currency were kept away,
and only large notes used, as in France, they would have a gold and
silver currency without paying a tax to any body for it, and without
being subject to any of the frightful evils resulting from the paper
system.
"Objecting to all banks of circulation, but not able to suppress
them entirely, Mr. B. suggested some ameliorations in the charters
proposed to be granted to render them less dangerous to the
community. 1. The liability of the stockholders for all the debts of
the institution, as in the Scottish banks. 2. The bank stock to be
subject to taxation, like other property. 3. To issue or receive no
note of less than twenty dollars. 4. The charters to be repealable
at the will of Congress: and he gave reasons for each of these
improvements; and first for the liability of the stockholders. He
said:
"Reasons for this liability were strong and palpable. A man that
owes should pay while he has property to pay with; and it is
iniquitous and unjustifiable that a bank director, or stockholder,
should riot in wealth while the business part of the community
should hold the bank notes which they have put into circulation, and
be able to get nothing for them after the bank had closed its doors.
Such exemptions are contrary to the rights of this community, and
one of the great causes of the failure of banks. A liability in the
stockbrokers is one of the best securities which the public can
have for the correct management and solvency of the institution.
The famous Scottish banks, which, in upwards of one hundred years'
operations, had neither once convulsed the country with contractions
and expansions, nor once stopped payment, were constituted upon this
principle. All the country banks in England, and all the bankers on
the continent of Europe, were liable to a still greater degree; for
in them each stockholder, or partner, was liable, individually, for
the whole amount of the debts of the bank. The principle proposed to
be incorporated in these charters strikes the just medium between
the common law principle, which makes each partner liable for the
whole debts of the firm; and the corporation principle in the United
States, which absolves each from all liability, and leaves the
penniless and soulless carcase of a defunct and eviscerated bank
alone responsible to the community. Liability to the amount of the
stock was an equitable principle, and with summary process for the
recovery of the amounts of notes and deposits, and the invalidity of
transfers of stock to avoid this liability, would be found a good
remedy for a great evil. If the stockholders in the three banks
which stopped payment in this city during the panic session had been
thus liable, the notes would not have been shaved out of the hands
of the holders; if the bank which stopped in Baltimore at the same
time, had been subject to this principle, the riots, which have
afflicted that city in consequence of that stoppage, would not have
taken place. Instead of these losses and riots, law and remedy would
have prevailed; every stockholder would have been summoned before a
justice of the peace--judgment granted against him on motion--for
the amount held by the complainant; and so on, until all were paid,
or he could plead that he had paid up the whole amount of his stock."
The evil of small notes he classed under three general heads: 1. The
banishment of gold and silver. 2. Encouragement to counterfeiting.
3. Throwing the burthens and losses of the paper system upon the
laboring and small-dealing part of the community, who have no share
in the profits of banking, and should not be made to bear its
losses. On these points, he said:
"The instinct of banks to sink their circulation to the lowest
denomination of notes which can be forced upon the community, is a
trait in the system universally proved to exist wherever banks of
circulation have been permitted to give a currency to a country;
and the effect of that instinct has always been to banish gold and
silver. When the Bank of England was chartered, in the year 1694,
it could issue no note less than £100 sterling; that amount was
gradually reduced by the persevering efforts of the bank, to £50;
then to £20; then to £15; then to £10; at last to £5; and finally to
£2 and £1. Those last denominations were not reached until the year
1797, or until one hundred and three years after the institution of
the bank; and as the several reductions in the size of the notes,
and the consequent increase of paper currency took place, gold
became more and more scarce; and with the issue of the one and two
pound notes, it totally disappeared from the country.
"This effect was foretold by all political economists, and
especially by Mr. Burke, then aged and retired from public life,
who wrote from his retreat, to Mr. Canning, to say to Mr. Pitt, the
Prime Minister, these prophetic words: 'If this bill for the one and
two pounds is permitted to pass, we shall never see another guinea
in England.' The bill did pass, and the prediction was fulfilled;
for not another guinea, half guinea, or sovereign, was seen in
England, for circulation, until the bill was repealed two and twenty
years afterwards! After remaining nearly a quarter of a century
without a gold circulation, England abolished her one and two pound
notes, limited her paper currency to £5 sterling, required all Bank
of England notes to be paid in gold, and allowed four years for
the act to take effect. Before the four years were out, the Bank
of England reported to Parliament that it was ready to begin gold
payments; and commenced accordingly, and has continued them ever
since.
"The encouragement of counterfeiting was the next great evil
which Mr. B. pointed out as belonging to a small note currency;
and of all the denominations of notes, he said those of one and
two pounds in England (corresponding with fives and tens in the
United States), were those to which the demoralizing business of
counterfeiting was chiefly directed! They were the chosen game
of the forging depredator! and that, for the obvious reasons that
fives and tens were small enough to pass currently among persons
not much acquainted with bank paper, and large enough to afford
some profit to compensate for the expense and labor of producing
the counterfeit, and the risk of passing it. Below fives, the
profits are too small for the labor and risk. Too many have to be
forged and passed before an article of any value can be purchased;
and the change to be got in silver, in passing one for a small
article, is too little. Of twenty and upwards, though the profit
is greater on passing them, yet the danger of detection is also
greater. On account of its larger size, the note is not only more
closely scrutinized before it is received, and the passer of it
better remembered, but the circulation of them is more confined to
business men and large dealers, and silver change will not be given
for them in buying small articles. The fives and tens, then, in
the United States, like the £1 and £2 in England, are the peculiar
game of counterfeiters, and this is fully proved by the criminal
statistics of the forgery department in both countries. According to
returns made to the British Parliament for twenty-two years--from
1797 to 1819--the period in which the one and two pound notes
were allowed to circulate, the whole number of prosecutions for
counterfeiting, or passing counterfeit notes of the Bank of England,
was 998: in that number there were 313 capital convictions; 530
inferior convictions; and 155 acquittals: and the sum of £249,900,
near a million and a quarter of dollars, was expended by the bank
in attending to prosecutions. Of this great number of prosecutions,
the returns show that the mass of them were for offences connected
with the one and two pound notes. The proportion may be distinctly
seen in the number of counterfeit notes of different denominations
detected at the Bank of England in a given period of time--from the
1st of January, 1812, to the 10th of April, 1818--being a period of
six years and three months out of the twenty-two years that the one
and two pound notes continued to circulate. The detections were, of
one pound notes, the number of 107,238; of two pound notes, 17,787;
of five pound notes, 5,826; of ten pound notes, 419; of twenty pound
notes, 54. Of all above twenty pounds, 35. The proportion of ones
and twos to the other sizes may be well seen in the tables for this
brief period; but to have any idea of the mass of counterfeiting
done upon those small notes, the whole period of twenty-two years
must be considered, and the entire kingdom of Great Britain taken
in; for the list only includes the number of counterfeits detected
at the counter of the bank; a place to which the guilty never carry
their forgeries, and to which a portion only of those circulating
in and about London could be carried. The proportion of crime
connected with the small notes is here shown to be enormously
and frightfully great. The same results are found in the United
States. Mr. B. had looked over the statistics of crime connected
with the counterfeiting of bank notes in the United States, and
found the ratio between the great and small notes to be about
the same that it was in England. He had had recourse to the most
authentic data--Bicknell's Counterfeit Detector--and there found
the editions of counterfeit notes of the local or State banks, to
be eight hundred and eighteen, of which seven hundred and fifty-six
were of ten dollars and under; and sixty-two editions only were of
twenty dollars and upwards. Of the Bank of the United States and
its branches, he found eighty-two editions of fives; seventy-one
editions of tens; twenty-six editions of twenties; and two editions
of fifties; still showing that in the United States, as well as in
England, on local banks as well as that of the United States, the
course of counterfeiting was still the same; and that the whole
stress of the crime fell upon the five and ten dollar notes in this
country, and their corresponding classes, the one and two pound
notes in England. Mr. B. also exhibited the pages of Bicknell's
Counterfeit Detector, a pamphlet covered over column after column
with its frightful lists, nearly all under twenty dollars; and he
called upon the Senate in the sacred name of the morals of the
country--in the name of virtue and morality--to endeavor to check
the fountain of this crime, by stopping the issue of the description
of notes on which it exerted nearly its whole force.
"Mr. B. could not quit the evils of the crime of counterfeiting in
the United States without remarking that the difficulty of legal
detection and punishment was so great, owing to the distance at
which the counterfeits were circulated from the banks purporting
to issue them, and the still greater difficulty (in most cases
impossible) of getting witnesses to attend in person, in States
in which they do not reside, the counterfeiters all choosing to
practise their crime and circulate their forgeries in States
which do not contain the banks whose paper they are imitating. So
difficult is it to obtain the attendance of witnesses in other
States, that the crime of counterfeiting is almost practised with
impunity. The notes under $20 feed and supply this crime; let them
be stopped, and ninety-nine hundredths of this crime will stop with
them.
"A third objection which Mr. B. urged against the notes under
twenty dollars was, that nearly the whole evils of that part of
the paper system fell upon the laboring and small dealing part of
the community. Nearly all the counterfeits lodged in their hands,
or were shaved out of their hands. When a bank failed, the mass
of its circulation being in small notes, sunk upon their hands.
The gain to the banks from the wear and tear of small notes, came
out of them; the loss from the same cause, falling upon them. The
ten or twelve percent. annual profit for furnishing a currency in
place of gold and silver (for which no interest would be paid to
the mint or the government), chiefly falls upon them; for the paper
currency is chiefly under twenty dollars. These evils they almost
exclusively bear, while they have, over and above all these, their
full proportion of all the evils resulting from the expansions and
contractions which are incessantly going on, totally destroying the
standard of value, periodically convulsing the country; and in every
cycle of five or six years making a lottery of all property, in
which all the prizes are drawn by bank managers and their friends.
"He wished the basis of circulation throughout the country to be in
hard money. Farmers, laborers, and market people, ought to receive
their payments in hard money. They ought not to be put to the risk
of receiving bank notes in all their small dealings. They are no
judges of good or bad notes. Counterfeits are sure to fall upon
their hands; and the whole business of counterfeiting was mainly
directed to such notes as they handle--those under twenty dollars.
"Mr. B. said he here wished to fix the attention of those who
were in favor of a respectable paper currency--a currency of
respectable-sized notes of twenty dollars and upwards--on the great
fact, that the larger the specie basis, the larger and safer would
be the superstructure of paper which rested upon it; the smaller
that specie basis, the smaller and more unsafe must be the paper
which rested on it. The currency of England is $300,000,000, to
wit: £8,000,000 sterling (near $40,000,000) in silver; £22,000,000
sterling (above $100,000,000) in gold; and about £30,000,000
sterling (near $150,000,000) in bank notes. The currency of the
United States is difficult to be ascertained, from the multitude of
banks, and the incessant ebb and flow of their issues; calculations
vary; but all put the paper circulation at less than $100,000,000;
and the proportion of specie and paper, at more than one half paper.
This is agreed upon all hands, and is sufficient for the practical
result, that an increase of our specie to $100,000,000, and the
suppression of small notes, will give a larger total circulation
than we now have, and a safer one. The total circulation may
then be $200,000,000, in the proportions of half paper and half
specie; and the specie, half gold and half silver. This would be an
immense improvement upon our present condition, both in quantity
and in quality; the paper part would become respectable from the
suppression of notes under twenty dollars, which are of no profit
except to the banks which issue them, and the counterfeiters
who imitate them; the specie part would be equally improved by
becoming one half gold. Mr. B. could not quit this important point,
namely, the practicability of soon obtaining a specie currency of
$100,000,000, and the one half gold, without giving other proofs
to show the facility with which it has been every where done when
attempted. He referred to our own history immediately after the
Revolution, when the disappearance of paper money was instantly
followed, as if by magic, by the appearance of gold and silver;
to France, where the energy of the great Napoleon, then first
consul, restored an abundant supply of gold and silver in one
year; to England, where the acquisition of gold was at the rate of
$24,000,000 per annum for four years after the notes under five
pounds were ordered to be suppressed; and he referred with triumph
to our own present history, when, in defiance of an immense and
powerful political and moneyed combination against gold, we will
have acquired about $20,000,000 of that metal in the two concluding
years of President Jackson's administration.
"Mr. B. took this occasion to express his regret that the true idea
of banks seemed to be lost in this country, and that here we had
but little conception of a bank, except as an issuer of currency.
A bank of discount and deposit, in contradistinction to a bank of
circulation, is hardly thought of in the United States; and it may
be news to some bank projectors, who suppose that nothing can be
done without banks to issue millions of paper, to learn that the
great bankers in London and Paris, and other capitals of Europe,
issue no paper; and, still more, it may be news to them to learn
that Liverpool and Manchester, two cities which happen to do about
as much business as a myriad of such cities as this our Washington
put together, also happen to have no banks to issue currency for
them. They use money and bills of exchange, and have banks of
discount and deposit, but no banks of circulation. Mr. Gallatin, in
his Essay upon Currency, thus speaks of them:
"'There are, however, even in England, where incorporated country
banks issuing paper are as numerous, and have been attended with
the same advantages, and the same evils, as our country banks, some
extensive districts, highly industrious and prosperous, where no
such bank does exist, and where that want is supplied by bills of
exchange drawn on London. This is the case in Lancashire, which
includes Liverpool and Manchester, and where such bills, drawn at
ninety days after date, are indorsed by each successive holder, and
circulate through numerous persons before they reach their ultimate
destination, and are paid by the drawee.'
"Mr. B. greatly regretted that such banks as those in Liverpool
and Manchester were not in vogue in the United States. They were
the right kind of banks. They did great good, and were wholly free
from mischief. They lent money; they kept money; they transferred
credits on books; they bought and sold bills of exchange; and
these bills, circulating through many hands, and indorsed by each,
answered the purpose of large bank notes, without their dangers, and
became stronger every time they were passed. To the banks it was a
profitable business to sell them, because they got both exchange and
interest. To the commercial community they were convenient, both
as a remittance and as funds in hand. To the community they were
entirely safe. Banks of discount and deposit in the United States,
issuing no currency, and issuing no bank note except of $100 and
upwards, and dealing in exchange, would be entitled to the favor and
confidence of the people and of the federal government. Such banks
only should be the depositories of the public moneys.
"It is the faculty of issuing paper currency which makes banks
dangerous to the country, and the height to which this danger has
risen in the United States, and the progress which it is making,
should rouse and alarm the whole community. It is destroying all
standard of value. It is subjecting the country to demoralizing
and ruinous fluctuations of price. It is making a lottery of
property, and making merchandise of money, which has to be bought
by the ticket holders in the great lottery at two and three per
cent. a month. It is equivalent to the destruction of weights and
measures, and like buying and selling without counting, weighing,
or measuring. It is the realization, in a different form, of the
debasement and arbitrary alteration of the value of coins practised
by the kings of Europe in former ages, and now by the Sultan of
Turkey. It is extinguishing the idea of fixed, moderate, annual
interest. Great duties are thus imposed upon the legislator; and
the first of these duties is to revive and favor the class of banks
of discount and deposit; banks to make loans, keep money, transfer
credits on books, buy and sell exchange, deal in bullion; but to
issue no paper. This class of banks should be revived and favored;
and the United States could easily revive them by confiding to them
the public deposits. The next great duty of the legislator is to
limit the issues of banks of circulation, and make them indemnify
the community in some little degree, by refunding, in annual taxes,
some part of their undue gains.
"The progress of the banking business is alarming and deplorable in
the United States. It is now computed that there are 750 banks and
their branches in operation, all having authority to issue currency;
and, what is worse, all that currency is receivable by the federal
government. The quantity of chartered bank capital, as it is called,
is estimated at near $800,000,000; the amount of this capital
reported by the banks to have been paid in is about $300,000,000;
and the quantity of paper money which they are authorized by their
charters to issue is about $750,000,000. How much of this is
actually issued can never be known with any precision; for such are
the fluctuations in the amount of a paper currency, flowing from
750 fountains, that the circulation of one day cannot be relied
upon for the next. The amount of capital, reported to be paid in,
is, however, well ascertained, and that is fixed at $300,000,000.
This, upon its face, and without recourse to any other evidence, is
proof that our banking system, as a whole, is unsolid and delusive,
and a frightful imposition upon the people. Nothing but specie can
form the capital of a bank; there are not above sixty or seventy
millions of specie in the country, and, of that, the banks have not
the one half. Thirty millions in specie is the extent; the remainder
of the capital must have been made up of that undefinable material
called 'specie funds,' or 'funds equivalent to specie,' the fallacy
of which is established by the facts already stated, and which show
that all the specie in the country put together is not sufficient
to meet the one fifth part of these 'specie funds,' or 'funds
equivalent to specie.' The equivalent, then, does not exist! credit
alone exists; and any general attempt to realize these 'specie
funds,' and turn them into specie, would explode the whole banking
system, and cover the country with ruin. There may be some solid and
substantial banks in the country, and undoubtedly there are better
and worse among them; but as a whole--and it is in that point of
view the community is interested--as a whole, the system is unsolid
and delusive; and there is no safety for the country until great and
radical reforms are effected.
"The burdens which these 750 banks impose upon the people were
then briefly touched by Mr. B. It was a great field, which he had
not time to explore, but which could not, in justice, be entirely
passed by. First, there were the salaries and fees of 750 sets of
bank officers: presidents, cashiers, clerks, messengers, notaries
public to protest notes, and attorneys to sue on them; all these
had salaries, and good salaries, paid by the people, though the
people had no hand in fixing these salaries: next, the profits to
the stockholders, which, at an average of ten per centum gross
would give thirty millions of dollars, all levied upon the people;
then came the profits to the brokers, first cousins to the bankers,
for changing notes for money, or for other notes at par; then the
gain to the banks and their friends on speculations in property,
merchandise, produce, and stocks, during the periodical visitations
of the expansions and contractions of the currency; then the gain
from the wear and tear of notes, which is so much loss to the
people; and, finally, the great chapter of counterfeiting which,
without being profitable to the bank, is a great burden to the
people, on whose hands all the counterfeits sink. The amount of
these burdens he could not compute; but there was one item about
which there was no dispute--the salaries to the officers and the
profits to the stockholders--and this presented an array of names
more numerous, and an amount of money more excessive, than was to be
found in the 'Blue Book,' with the Army and Navy Register inclusive.
"Mr. B. said this was a faint sketch of the burdens of the banking
system as carried on in the United States, where every bank is a
coiner of paper currency, and where every town, in some States,
must have its banks of circulation, while such cities as Liverpool
and Manchester have no such banks, and where the paper money of all
these machines receive wings to fly over the whole continent, and
to infest the whole land, from their universal receivability by the
federal government in payment of all dues at their custom-houses,
land-offices, post-offices, and by all the district attorneys,
marshals, and clerks, employed under the federal judiciary. The
improvidence of the States, in chartering such institutions, is
great and deplorable; but their error was trifling, compared to the
improvidence of the federal government in taking the paper coinage
of all these banks for the currency of the federal government,
maugre that clause in the constitution which recognizes nothing but
gold and silver for currency, and which was intended for ever to
defend and preserve this Union from the evils of paper money.
"Mr. B. averred, with a perfect knowledge of the fact, that the
banking system of the United States was on a worse footing than
it was in any country upon the face of the earth; and that, in
addition to its deep and dangerous defects, it was also the most
expensive and burdensome, and gave the most undue advantages to
one part of the community over another. He had no doubt but that
this banking system was more burdensome to the free citizens of the
United States than ever the feudal system was to the villeins, and
serfs, and peasants of Europe. And what did they get in return for
this vast burden? A pestiferous currency of small paper! when they
might have a gold currency without paying interest, or suffering
losses, if their banks, like those in Liverpool and Manchester,
issued no currency except as bills of exchange; or, like the Bank of
France, issued no notes but those of 500 and 1,000 francs (say $100
and $500); or even, like the Bank of England, issued no note under
£5 sterling, and payable in gold. And with how much real capital
is this banking system, so burdensome to the people of the United
States, carried on? About $30,000,000! Yes; on about $30,000,000 of
specie rests the $300,000,000 paid in, and on which the community
are paying interest, and giving profits to bankers, and blindly
yielding their faith and confidence, as if the whole $300,000,000
was a solid bed of gold and silver, instead of being, as it is, one
tenth part specie, and nine tenths paper credit!"
Other senators spoke against the recharter of these banks, without
the amelioration of their charters which the public welfare
required; but without effect. The amendments were all rejected,
and the bill passed for the recharter of the whole six by a large
vote--26 to 14. The yeas and nays were:
YEAS.--Messrs. Black, Buchanan, Calhoun, Clay, Crittenden,
Cuthbert, Davis, Ewing of Ohio, Goldsborough, Hendricks,
Hubbard, Kent, King of Alabama, Knight, Leigh, Naudain,
Nicholas, Porter, Prentiss, Rives, Southard, Swift, Tallmadge,
Tomlinson, Walker, Webster.
NAYS.--Messrs. Benton, Ewing of Illinois, King of Georgia, Linn,
McKean, Mangum, Morris, Niles, Robinson, Ruggles, Shepley, Wall,
White, Wright.