SENATE.] Treasury Circular. a contraction of the issues of the Bank of England; destruction of country bank paper in 1814, 1815, 1816, also in 1825 and 1826; measures proposed in 1826 for improving the state of the currency; remarks on those measures; proposals for taking security from country banks; advantages that would result from carrying this proposal into effect; objections to it examined and answered." Mr. B. then read some passages from the chapter itself, regretting the necessity which limited him to few and brief extracts: 1. Panic of 1793.-"The extended transactions of the country required fresh facilities for carrying them on; and, in consequence, a bank was erected in every market town, and in almost every village. To force their paper into circulation was the object of all. The catastrophe which followed was such as might have been foreseen. The currency having become redundant, the exchanges took an unfavorable turn in the early part of 1792; and the Bank of England having been, in consequence, obliged to narrow her issues, a most violent revulsion took place in the end of that year and beginning of 1793. The failure of one or two great houses excited a panic, which proved fatal to myriads more. When this revulsion began, there were, it is supposed, about 350 country banks in England and Wales; of which about 100 were compelled to stop payment, and upwards of 50 more were totally destroyed, producing by their fall an extent of misery and bankruptcy that had been, until then, unknown in England." 2. Panic of 1813.-"Up to 1813 there were banks in almost all parts of England, forcing their paper into circulation at an enormous expense to themselves. The price of corn had risen to an extraordinary height in 1813, and fell in the beginning of 1814. This fall produced a want of confidence, and an alarm among the country bankers and their customers; and such a destruction of country paper took place as has not been paralleled, except only by the revulsion in 1825. By 1816, no fewer than 240 country banks had stopped payments, and 92 commissions of bankruptcy were issued by these establishments. The failures that then occurred were the more distressing as they chiefly affected the industrious and poorer classes, and frequently swal lowed up, in an instant, the fruits of a long life of la borious exertion. Thousands upon thousands, who had considered themselves affluent, found they were destitute of all real property, and sunk, as if by enchantment, and without any fault of their own, into the abyss of poverty. The universality of the wretchedness and misery had never been equalled, perhaps, except by the breaking up of the Mississippi scheme in France." [DEC. 19, 1836. larger and more magnificent scale, and with more destructive consequences. Sauve qui peut! Save himself who can! was the universal cry. And the destruction of country paper was so sudden and excessive that in less than six weeks above 70 banking establishments were swept off" This (said Mr. B.) is Mr. McCulloch's account of the three per cent. system earthquakes which have taken place since the time of Adam Smith, maugre all his fine phrases about specie-paying banks, and bank notes equivalent to gold, and convertible into gold at the will of the holder. Three times in twenty-five years has the whole blown up! to say nothing of the crisis of 1797, and the numerous small panics and individual explosions which have filled up the intervals between the large ones. The result is a conviction that banks of issue must be suppressed, directly or indirectly, all over Eng. land. The mode proposed, is to require security from them in addition to their individual liability, and that not the personal security of men, but the real security of lands mortgaged or Government stock pledged. Here is an extract from McCulloch on this point: "Whatever bank notes may be in law, they are practically, and in fact, a legal tender. The great mass of the people are totally without the power to refuse them. The currency of many extensive districts consists almost entirely of country notes; and such small farmers, tradesmen, or laborers, as should refuse to take them, would be obliged to migrate elsewhere. There cannot, therefore, as it appears to me, be the shadow of a doubt that this is a case in which Government is imperiously called upon to interfere. We have sustained incomparably more mischief from the issue of spurious paper than from that of base coin; and in order to obviate such mischief in future, and to give that security to the public which is so essential, we have, as was observed before, no alternative, but either to suppress country notes altogether, or to require security from the issuers." "In the case of Bank of England notes, a guarantee is taken by the Government for the notes which the bank issues; and the whole capital of the bank must be lost before the holders of the notes can be sufferers. Why is not the same principle followed with respect to country banks? What objection can there be against requiring of those who take upon themselves the office of furnishing the country with a circulating medium, to deposite with Government an adequate security for the performance of their engagements? In the use of money every one is a trader; those whose habits and pursuits are little suited to explore the mechanism of trade, are obliged to make use of money, and are no way qualified to ascertain the solidity of the different banks whose paper is in circulation; accordingly, we find that men living on limited incomes, women, laborers, and mechanics of all descriptions, are often severe sufferers by the failure of the 3. Panic of 1825.-"Nations are slow and reluctant learners; and it seems as if additional experience had been necessary to convince the Parliament and people of England that there was any thing defective in a sys-country banks, which have lately become frequent betem which had, in two previous instances, deluged the country with bankruptcy; and which enables every individual, however poor and unprincipled, who chooses to open a money shop, to issue notes to serve as currency in the ordinary transactions of society! A rise of prices and a rage for speculation took place in 1824-25. Many of the country bankers seemed to have no other object than to get themselves indebted to the public; and such was the vigor and success of their efforts to get their paper into circulation, that the amount of it afloat in 1825 was estimated to be near fifty per cent. greater than the amount afloat in 1823. The consequence of this extravagant and unprincipled conduct is well known. The currency became redundant, exchange began to decline, and a heavy drain for bullion compelled the Bank of England to lessen her issues. This was the signal for the repetition of the tragedy of 1793, but on a much yond example. Against this mischief the public should be protected by requiring of every country bank (that is to say, exery bank except the Bank of England, for which the Government is security to the whole amount of its capital) to deposite with Government, or with commissioners appointed for that purpose, funded property, or other Government security, in some proportion to the amount of their issues. No establishment for the issue of notes could then exist, unless it had been set on foot by individuals possessed of adequate capital. And adventurers, speculating on the funds of others, and sharpers, anxious to get themselves indebted to the public, would find that banking was no longer a field on which they could advantageously enter." Mr. B. would economize time and words, and proceed to the practical application of these extracts from the present head of the paper system school in England. DEC. 19, 1836.] Treasury Circular. [SENATE. 1. The destruction of the standard or measure of value. Paper money neither is, ever was, or ever can be, a standard of value. Its quantity varies at the will of man, or rather at the will of each of the thousand Neptunes who preside over the ocean of paper; and not only at their will, but without their will, in the mere imprudence or folly of those who direct paper issues, and the thousand causes which operate upon the expansion and contraction of banks. The standard, or measure of value, is at this moment materially altered in the United States. This is seen in the increased price of every article which depends for its price upon the domestic market; and it is proved by the stationary or reduced price of every article which depended for its price on foreign markets. Cotton and tobacco were in this latter class, and had not risen, but rather fallen; all articles of home use and consumption were in the former, and all had risen, some one half, some double. The precious metals, from their uniformity of production, difficulty of suddenly and violently changing the quantity and intrinsic It is a surrender and proposed suppression of all banks of issue except the Bank of England, for which the British Government is the security and the responsible backer. This is what the original of our paper system, and a far safer system than ours, has come to in England! Given up and proscribed by the school that founded it, and that school more seriously engaged now in putting down their system than they were fifty years ago in founding it. And what is the state of things with us? Not only an appalling extension of the paper system through the annual bank incorporations of nearly thirty Legislatures, State and Territorial, but this attempt now made in the Senate of the United States to compel the adoption of all the State and Territorial paper systems, existing or to exis', by the Federal Government, and thus to make out of this multifarious mass a national paper currency. This is the effect; and, without disturbing the States in the use of this paper themselves, Mr. B. confined himself to the question before the Senate, namely, the adoption of the whole of it for the currency of the Federal Government. To this he had insuperable and in-value all over the world, can alone make a standard or exorable objections, founded, first, upon the constitution of the United States, and, next, upon the unspeakable mischiefs of the scheme. On the constitutional point he would be brief, limiting himself to the words of the instrument, and to Mr. Madison's commentary. The constitution says: Congress shall have power"To coin money, regulate the value thereof, and of foreign coin, and fix the standard of weights and measures." "To provide for the punishment of counterfeiting the securities and current coin of the United States." "No State shall coin money; emit bills of credit; make any thing but gold and silver coin a tender in payment of debts." measure of value. Our constitution has guarantied that standard to us; and it is our sacred duty to preserve it. Mr. B. finished his remarks on this point with a quotation from Mr. McCulloch, preferring his authority to others, because he was of the paper system school, though now limiting his system to the Bank of England only: "No doubt has ever been insinuated with respect to the expediency of the regulations by which all weights and measures of the same denomination are rendered equal. But money is not a commodity merely; it is also the standard or measure, adopted by society, by which to estimate and compare the value of every thing else that is bought and sold; and if it be, as it most undoubtedly is, the duty of Government to adopt every practicable means for rendering all foot-rules of the same length, and all bushels of the same capacity, it must be still more incumbent upon it to omit nothing to render money, or the measure of value, a measure which is, beyond all question, the most important of any used in society, uniform or steady in its value." Mr. Madison, in No. 44 of the Federalist, says: "The loss which America has sustained since the peace, from the pestilent effects of paper money on the necessary confidence between man and man; on the necessary confidence in the public councils; on the industry and morals of the people, and on the character of republican government, constitutes an enormous debt against the States, chargeable with this unadvised meas. 2. Usury. This, he said, was a direct effect of paper ure, which must long remain unsatisfied; or, rather, an money. The more banks of issue, the higher the rate accumulation of guilt, which can be expiated no other- of interest. Common bank interest in the United States wise than by a voluntary sacrifice on the altar of justice is seven per cent. or more, which is double the rate of of the power which has been the instrument of it. interest in Holland, where there is no paper. addition to these persuasive considerations, it may be ob- mon interest is nothing compared to the usury which enserved that the same reasons which show the necessity sues great banking, and which becomes enormous when of denying to the States the power of regulating coin, banks, from necessity or mischief,- stop discounts, and prove, with equal force, that they ought not to be at lib-throw borrowers upon money dealers. Three per cent. erty to substitute a paper medium in the place of coin. The power to make any thing but gold and silver a tender in payment of debts is withdrawn from the States, on the same principle with that of issuing a paper currency." In Resting the constitutional objection to this adoption of the State paper currencies for the currency of the Feder al Government where the constitution and Mr. Madison had put it, and merely referring to the great revenue acts of 1789 and 1800, for the correct exposition of the constitution, in limiting the receipts for the customs and the lands to "gold and silver coin only," and "to specie or evidences of the public debt," Mr. B. would state the heads, and the heads only, of the objections to the expediency of the measure. Premising that what the Government received, as cash, would have to be paid out as cash, and that, if local paper was received at all, it would soon be received totally, and to the exclusion of specie, and that local paper would thus become the actual currency of the Government and the country, until relieved from it by a general explosion, Mr. B. went on to enumerate the practical evils of such an unconstitutional currency. But com discount per month is then the order of things; and this may now be seen in Philadelphia, where the United States Bank, with its thirty-five millions capital, on becoming a State institution, was to fill the State with money, and reduce interest to five per cent. But that bank does lend to some borrowers at five per cent. or less. The correspondence of the commissioners employed in examining the state of the bank, preparatory to the settlement of the value of the United States stock, shows a mass of loans, to the amount of twenty-three millions of dollars, on extended or indefinite time, and at rates from 44, 5, 54, to 6 per cent. per annum. No doubt many of the three per cent. per month borrowers get their supplies from a part of these loans. 3. Panics, convulsions, and stoppages. --These (said Mr. B.) are inherent in the paper system. They take place in England in defiance of all power in the Govern ment and the banks themselves to keep them down. There, no panics are perpetrated to scourge the country or to overset the Government, save and except the two political ones lately seen--Mr. O'Connor's, and the one during the interregnum of Lord Grey's administra SENATE.] tion. Treasury Circular. But here, panics are the regular work of banks and politicians, and are now looked for whenever an important election is depending, or Congress is to be excited. 4. The expense of the paper system. --This was proba bly greater at present than the expenses of the Federal Government, and the whole a tax upon the productive classes. The number of banks was about one thousand; each bank had its officers, and they their salaries; each had its stockholders, and they their profits. Then came losses for broken banks, counterfeits, and depreciated paper, and changes in the value of property from expansions and contractions of the currency. penses and losses were the price paid by the people for a paper currency, when they can get constitutional currency from the mints, without paying salaries, furnishing profits, or sustaining losses, if paper was checked and confined to large notes. These ex 5. Stock gambling, forgeries, banishment of all gold and silver, were all great evils inherent in the paper system, and too obvious to need, or even endure, commentary. Mr. B., therefore, barely named them, and left every one's knowledge and memory to do the rest. Mr. B. approached the conclusion of his remarks on this great subject. It was, indeed, a great subject, involving that momentous question, the national currency. The Treasury order was a measure of regulation upon the State banks, intended to save the finances and the currency, as well as the public lands. The bank of the United States regulated the State banks by the simple process of excluding their paper from the Federal re. ceipts and expenditures; and this was effected by the 24th and 25th articles of the by-laws of the corporation a'ready read. She excluded them to make room for her own notes; and this was the extent of her skill and of her merit in all this boasted regulation of local currencies of which we hear so much. The Federal Government has only to do the same, and the State bank issues are repelled upon their sources, and become comparatively harmless. It is receivability for federal dues; it is receivability at the land offices, custom-houses, and post offices, which gives them wings to fly over the continent, and enables them to pass, without regard to the credit or solvency of the bank from which they come. It is the Federal Government endorsement which does the mischief; and this endorsement, for all the purposes of false credit and want of responsibility, is given to the whole issue of every bank whose paper is made receiv able for public dues. The experiment has been tried, and local paper has failed as a national currency, and out of that failure arose the second United States Bank. It will fail again, and again, and forever! There is no safety for the federal revenues but in the total exclusion of local paper, and that from every branch of the revenue--customs, lands, and post office. There is no safety for the national finances but in the constitutional medium of gold and silver. After forty years of wandering in the wilderness of paper money, we have approached the confines of the constitutional medium. Seventy-five millions of specie in the country, with the prospect of annual increase of ten or twelve millions for the next four years, three branch mints to commence next spring, and the complete restoration of the gold currency, announce the success of President Jackson's great meas ures for the reform of the currency, and vindicate the constitution from the libel of having prescribed an im. practicable currency. The success is complete; and there is no way to thwart it, but to put down the Treasury order, and to reopen the public lands to the inundation of paper money. Of this, it is not to be dissembled, there is great danger. Four deeply interested classes are at work to do it-speculators, local banks, United States Bank, and politicians out of power. They [DEC. 19, 1836. The may succeed, but he (Mr. B.) would not despair. darkest hour of night is just before the break of day; and, through the gloom ahead, he saw the bright vision of the constitutional currency erect, radiant, and victorious. Through regulation or explosion success must eventually come. If reform measures go on, gold and silver will be gradually and temperately restored; if reform measures are stopped, then the paper system runs riot, and explodes from its own expansion. Then the Bank of the United States will exult in the catastrophe, and claim its own re-establishment, as the only adequate regulator of the local banks. Then it will be said the specie experiment has failed! But no; the contrary will be known, that the specie experiment has not failed, but it was put down by the voice and power of the interested classes, and must be put up again by the voice and power of the disinterested community. Appendix to Mr. BENTON's speech on the rescinding resolution, containing proofs of several things stated in the speech. I. That the banks themselves, by contractions and expansions of the currency, lead to fluctuations which affect the prices of produce and property, and beget panics. 1. Extract from the testimony of Joseph C. Dyer, Esq., director of the Bank of Manchester, taken before Lord Althorpe's committee: "The Bank of England, the cause of fluctuations and panics."-"The bank has been the cause of the panics. Their manner of issuing and withdrawing the Bank of England paper produces those continued fluctuations, at short periods, which affect the prices in the market, and thereby affect trade. Those issues, sometimes in a single week, vary three or four millions. The bank may be necessitated to do so, but such a necessity is that of inflicting a great evil on the country. The returns of the weekly issues from the 28th of December, 1819, to the 4th of February, 1826, prove witness's statement. "The reason why it is necessary to make an alteration in the banking system of Lancashire, is that the circulation by the Bank of England subjects the trade to fluctuations, and exercises a pernicious influence over the destinies of commerce. This expansion and contraction of the circulation induce similar effects to a ru inous extent. All the periods of panic may be attributed to that power exercised in secret, and of which the public can have no knowledge, until it has accomplished its results. It stimulates over-issues in the country, raises and lowers the value of money capriciously, and erects its own security on the insecurity of country bankers. Such a company, possessing such influence so exercised, is a dangerous company; and plans can be devised to procure a better circulation than the present, in which there is neither stability nor steadiness." 2. Extract from the preface to the digest of evidence taken before Lord Althorpe's committee in 1832: * "The records of past history have invariably desig nated a time of peace as one of prosperity and happiness. But, ever since the last war, the different great interests of this country have been in a continued state of fluctuation between the extremes of prosperity and adversity; though the latter has unfortunately predominated. In the beginning of that year, (1825,) every class of the community was doing well, if not in a state of great prosperity. But a change took place in the currency, by the Bank of England contracting their issues. The general prosperity, withcut any other visible cause, immediately received a chick; and as the bank continued to contract their issus, matters became worse, until they ended in the panic. By this a total derangement of the monetary system was occasioned, and every class of the community was thrown into a state of embarrassment, the inju rious and depressing effects of which continued for some years, and this without any other apparent cause than the monetary derangement which had occurred." "An undue issue of four or five millions by the Bank of England] would eventually make an extraordinary derangement in the value of all the property in the kingdom, and be productive of infinite mischief in a variety of ways." 3. Further extract from the testimony of J. C. Dyer, Esq. "I think the banks, so far from having saved the country from the effects of those panics, have been the cause of those panics; and that they have been the cause of a constant succession of little panics, continually annoying the commerce of the country, by monthly and weekly fluctuations." 4. Extract from the testimony of Benjamin J. Smith, Esq., a director of the Bank of Manchester, before Lord Althorpe's committee: "The supply of the circulation by the Bank of England subjects our trade to great and injurious fluctuations, owing to what is called a scarcity of money, arising from causes of which the public, who are deeply interested in that question, can have no knowledge. The objections to the existing system are, that the Bank of England has a secret and despotic influence and control over the destinies of our commerce, which we feel to be a most pernicious one." II. No local banks of issue in the great county of Lancashire, including Liverpool and Manchester. Inland bills of exchange used in large dealings; gold in the common transactions. 1. Extract from the evidence of J. C. Dyer, Esq., a director of the Bank of Manchester, before Lord Althorpe's committee: "The bankers in Manchester who can, do not, issue notes, in consequence of the strong feeling that prevails in Lancashire againt local paper. There were two occasions when that feeling was publicly expressed; first, in 1834, and next when the Bank of Manchester was formed. Bankers who intended to issue notes abandoned their intention, from a conviction that they could not, under any such circumstances, derive any profit from the issue." 2. Extract from Mr. McCulloch's notes on Adam Smith's work: "The principal distinction between notes and bills of exchange is, that every individual passing a bill of exchange has to endorse it, and by so doing makes himself responsible for its contents. Nothing can be more inaccurate than to represent bank notes and bills of exchange under the same point of view. The note is payable on the instant, without deduction--the bill not until some future period. The note may be passed to another, without incurring any risk or responsibility, while every endorser of the bill makes himself liable for the value of it. Bank notes form the currency of all classes; of those who are not engaged in business, of women, children, laborers, &c., who are all, as we have seen, without the power to refuse them, and without the means of forming any correct conclusion as to the solvency of the issuers. Bills of exchange, on the other hand, pass only, with very few exceptions, between persons engaged in business, and who are fully aware of the risk they run in taking them." 3. Further extract from McCulloch's notes: "The effects produced by the employment of internal bills of exchange, have not certainly excited that attention, on the part of most of those who have speculated on the subject of currency, that might reasonably have VOL. XIII.-5 [SENATE. been expected; but this seems to have arisen chiefly from their having been but very imperfectly aware of the vast magnitude of the transactions settled by their intervention, and of the extent to which they are em ployed. In the great manufacturing county of Lancashire, and in part of Yorkshire, a bill on London at three months is reckoned a money payment; and by far the largest proportion of the currency consists either of the bills of bankers drawn on their correspondents, or of those of the merchants and dealers scattered up and down the country. The following extracts from the evidence given before the committee of the House of Lords on Scotch and Irish currency, in the session of 1826, show the great extent to which internal bills are now employed. Mr. Gladstone, an eminent merchant of Liverpool, informed the committee that we sell our goods, not for payments in cash, such as are usual in other places, but generally at credits from ten days to three months' date; these bills we pay to our bankers, and receive from them bills or cash. We have a considerable portion of large Bank of England notes in circulation; these are generally used for the payment of duties, and also for the purpose of remittance; but the great mass of our circulation is in bills of exchange. Sovereigns and smaller bank notes are only required for such objects as charges of merchandise, with duties, freights, and other items.' Lewis Lloyd, Esq. 'The wages of workmen are paid in gold or Bank of England notes; the manufacturer is chiefly paid in bills of ex. change. When a bill is drawn in favor of a manufacturer, he endorses it to the person to whom he pays it, and the person to whom he pays it pays it again to another; and it goes on often till it is covered with endorsements. Mr. Henry Burgess, a manufacturer at Leeds. The great mass of the circulating medium of Lancashire, as in all the manufacturing districts in the North, is bills of exchange: a part of the circulation is in gold and silver and Bank of England notes.'" III. Suppression of all banks of issue in England, except the Bank of England, directly by law, or indirectly, by compelling them to give security for their issues. 1. Extract from Mr. McCulloch's notes on Adam Sinith: "It seems, therefore, to be indispensable, either that the country banks should be compelled, as has been previously proposed, to give full security for their issues, or that their paper should be suppressed altogether, and the paper of the Bank of England substituted in its place. Now, it is obvious, and is indeed universally admitted, that the only measure that can be adopted for guarding completely against the misconduct as well as the bad faith of the country bankers is to compel them to give full security for the payment of their notes. This, and this alone, can afford a sufficient guarantee to the public that the country paper in circulation will be returned when presented for payment, and that it is really equivalent to gold. "Every country banker, on applying for stamps, should be required and obliged, previously to obtaining them, to lodge in the hands of Government securities, in stocks or landed estates, fully equivalent to the amount of the stamps issued to him."" 2. Extract from the testimony of Henry Burgess, Esq., Secretary of the committee of country banks, representing seven eighths of the bankers in England, who have resolved to relinquish their circulation rather than give security for it: "The only strong opinion to which the committee have come is, that if securities for their issues were demanded, they would relinquish their issues altogether. That resolution was imbodied in a petition to Parliament. * The chief reason why country bankers IV. Extract from the report of the commissioners appointed on the part of the United States to examine into the debts and affairs of the Bank of the United States, to ascertain the value of the stock, showing above twen ty millions of loans at low interest for long terms, or indefinite terms, and explaining the reason why borrow. ers in Philadelphia are thrown upon brokers at two and three per cent. discount per month. 1. Statement of the debts of the Bank of the United States, &c. on the 3d March, 1836: [EC. 20, 1836. 3. Further extract from Mr. Clayton's report of 1832, to illustrate the conduct of the Bank of the United States in loaning much to the few, and little to the many, and explanatory of the present condition of the money market in Philadelphia, where small borrowers for short terms pay three per cent. per month discount for money, which may have come from the Bank of the United States to a large borrower on a term of years, or indefinitely, or on immateriality of time: April, 1832, loan to 72 persons, $2,404,278 1,274,882 1,294,800 00 delphia, April, 1832. 466,300 00 C. On bank stock do. 6 do. E. On various stocks and other securi do. G. do. H. do. do. K. do. do. M. do. N. do. Total as above 41 do. 5 do. 4,551,865 65 250,000.00 355,500 00 474,600 00 1,296,678 00 3,317,605 09 20,337,136 80 TUESDAY, DECEMBER, 20. THE DEPOSITE BANKS. Mr. WEBSTER offered the following resolutions, and asked the unanimous consent of the Senate to their immediate consideration: Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury communicate to the Senate the latest statement made at or for the Treasury of the condition of the deposite banks; ex The length of time for which some of these loans are hibiting, among other particulars, the names and places of all deposite banks appointed since the 23d June last; their capitals, and the amounts of public moneys actually transferred, or ordered to be transferred, to those banks, respectively. Resolved, That the Secretary of the Treasury communicate to the Senate a detailed statement of all transfers of public moneys ordered since the 23d June last, for the purpose of executing the act of that date for regulating the deposites of the public money; showing the dates and amounts of such transfers; from what place to allowed for such transfers, other than such as were made what place; from what bank to what bank, and the time in execution of the aforesaid act. Mr. WEBSTER said that the honorable member from Missouri [Mr. BENTON] had, in his speech yester day, read statements which had been obtained at the Treasury, for the purpose of showing that sundry banks had enlarged their issues since the publication of the Treasury order of the 11th of July. This information (said Mr. WEBSTER) is neither new nor surprising. That fact has been well undestood. But what banks are these which have thus increased their loans? Are they the banks of the country generally, or the banks in the principal commercial cities, or a majority of them? No, sir. The gentleman's statement was confined to the deposite banks, or some of them. All those deposite banks were seventy or eighty perhaps in number, while it has been stated that the whole number of banks in the country is near a thousand. Now, as I understand the subject, one of the strongest grounds of complaint against the order of the 11th of July, and against the manner of executing the deposite law, is, that by those measures many of these deposite banks, in places where the wants of business did not call for more money, have had large and entirely unnecessary sums of money nevertheless thrown into them, drawn from places in which it was wanted, to the great prejudice of other banks, and of the commercial community generally. I understand this to be one of the prominent objections |