The scire facias being sustained by the decision of the Court of Appeals, vacated the charter of the bank, which was renewed by an act of the Legislature passed at the session of 1844.

The effect of these proceedings was to bring the banking system of the State to that normal state of legitimate financial exchanges which preserved the currency of the banks in South Carolina from speculative fluctuations in intrinsic value, and held the notes of the Bank of the State, and all other reputable banks in the State, at par with the gold standard recognized throughout the commercial world. It was in consequence of the proceedings in these cases that a bill of the Bank of South Carolina was accepted everywhere in commercial transactions as the representative of so much gold and commanded a large premium over the bills of the banks in other sections, which were being conducted upon a more speculative plan. Security took the place of mistrust, and actual value that of a mere printed assertion.

It was not until the War of Secession, beginning in 1860, disturbed the system thus inaugurated, and until the march of armies and the chaos of revolution took the place of peaceful occupations, that the currency of South Carolina ceased to represent on the face of the bank bills their full gold value.

Dr. McGuffey, for many years a distinguished Professor of Political Economy at the University of Virginia, in a lecture to his class on the subject of banking, declared this ar gument of Mr. Memminger to be the soundest and most exhaustive treatise on banking he had ever met with.

I trust that no apology is due the reader for having led him into alcoves that may, to some extent, be barren of that more enticing literature

"Where sports the warbling muse and fancy soars sublime,"

Biography would be but poorly written if it did not present truthfully and without the gloss of rhetorical exaggeration or excuse the character and the thoughts and the acts of the individual.

Following the case of The State versus The Bank of South Carolina came that of The State versus The Bank of Charleston. This case was in some respects similar to that of the Bank of South Carolina-so much so that I deem it unnecessary to refer to the pleadings or to the arguments of counsel. Before dismissing the subject of the bank cases, and as an evidence of the sincere and patriotic motives that influenced Mr. Memminger to attack with such earnestness the State Bank, allow me to call the reader's attention to the proceedings of subsequent legislatures with regard to this matter.

The charter of the Bank of South Carolina was about to expire by limitation, and in anticipation of this Mr. Memminger introduced in the House of Representatives during the session of 1848 the following resolutions:

1st. Resolved, That it is unwise and inexpedient for a State to engage in banking or to subject its resources to the casualties of banking operations.

2d. That the Bank of the State is founded on this erroneous policy and exposes the public treasury and the public faith to the hazards incident to banks.

3d. That it is inexpedient to re-charter the Bank of the State, and that measures ought now to be taken to wind up its concerns during the period of its present charter.

4th. That a special committee of each House be appointed to devise and report at the next session the proper measures for carrying into effect the last resolution.

These resolutions were adopted after a protracted debate, in which Mr. Memminger presented his objections to the State entering upon a banking business in speeches of great power. He was made chairman of the joint committee raised by the resolutions, and as such reported to the House

in the session of 1849 a bill to provide for winding up the affairs of the bank. This bill was under discussion for a length of time during this session, and called out the full force of the friends of the bank, who were ably represented in the discussion, and, as I am informed, by strong and influential agents, who remained at the capitol until the decisive vote was taken. This vote was taken on a motion of Mr. Irby to indefinitely postpone the bill, reports, resolutions and amendments. Those voting to indefinitely postpone the whole subject numbered sixty-two, and those voting in the negative, sixty.

The spirit displayed in the debate, and the methods resorted to by the friends of the bank, greatly incensed Mr. Memminger. On his return to his constituency he published a series of articles in the Charleston Courier, over his signature, in which he presented his objections to the recharter of the bank. I do not deem it necessary to publish all of these articles, as the last, which is a recapitulation, will be sufficient to present the matter clearly to the reader. In the opening sentences of his first article he uses the following language:

At the last session of the Legislature the debate on the Bank of the State was suppressed by the friends of the bank before they allowed me the opportunity to reply to them. As the chairman of the committee which reported the bill under consideration, and, moreover, as chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, I was entitled to be heard in reply. This right was still more manifest because I had been personally assailed by two champions of the bank, and the South Carolina Legislature had never before refused, to the humblest representative, an opportunity to defend himself. This result was brought about by a bare majority of two votes, and when you are informed that the two champions who had assailed me personally voted in the majority, and that one of them actually harangued the House in favor of cutting off the debate, and with it my reply, you will agree with me that pursuit of such adversaries would be superfluous. I have no disposition to tear them from the horns of the altar; but the privilege of the sanctuary is altogether personal, and, while I redeem the pledge which I made at the opening of the debate, to decline all personal controversy, I cannot

permit the friends of the bank to shut me out from laying before you, fellow-citizens, the information and arguments which I had collected in reply.

Before presenting to the reader the concluding article of Mr. Memminger, which is a review of the whole controversy between himself and Mr. F. H. Elmore, the president of the bank, I deem it proper to call the reader's attention to the answer of Mr. Memminger to the charge made against him as chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means in the House, and against Mr. Jefferson Bennett, a prominent senator, of conspiring together to secure the appointment of a joint committee of which each were to be made chairman, with hostile designs against the bank. The following reply by Mr. Memminger, is taken from the Charleston Mercury of March 8, 1850.

To the People of South Carolina:

I had supposed that I was near the land in the sea of charges on which I have been launched by the president of the bank. I had reached the year 1846, and expected to dispose of that period in the present number. But the last number of the president of the bank carries us back to the year 1838, and renews one of his charges of that year in a new form. The charge, as originally made, was, that Mr. Bennett and myself, between whom the most confidential relations subsisted, and who were occupying the most responsible positions on the floor of each House, had taken advantage of that position, and by concerted ac tion had contrived the appointment of a joint committee, of which each was to be chairman, with a hostile design against the Bank of the State.

The whole force of the charge lay in the allegation of concert and conspiracy. This I proved to be utterly without foundation, by exhibiting the original proceedings as certified by the clerks of the Senate and House, which showed that these proceedings originated with others, and that neither of us had anything to do with them.

Having thus refuted the charge made, I should have rested there," But I went on to affirm that I had never made a motion for the appointment of such a committee, and that I was incapable of so gross an indelicacy. The president of the bank having procured information that' this assertion was “inaccurate," abandons his original charge of com

bination and presents a new one, charging me with having separately offered such a resolution, as that which I have censured as a gross indelicacy. In order to give him the full benefit of what can be made of the charge, I quote his own language. Speaking of me, he says: "The journals show that he offered the resolution, and the resolution, in his own hand-writing, is conclusive of the fact. Even in the extremity (he continues) of an utterly desperate case like this, he cannot fly to the miserable and quibbling subterfuge that his appointment was under the Senate resolution, for by offering his two days before, parliamentary usage would cause his appointment as chairman. His only escape was in denying the fact. That he offered such a resolution, and that fact he did deny, but the records settle it conclusively against him. Where will he fly to now?"

Answer.-Truth and integrity never fly. They stand fast together and sustain each other. When I asserted that I had never made the motion, I did so upon the highest proof which could be procured. I did not venture to rely upon memory, but applied to the officers who had the keeping of the journals of both Houses for all the information which they could furnish. Their certificates I have published. I also wrote to the then Speaker of the House (now Judge Wardlaw), and have since received his reply, in which he says: You had no agency in procuring the appointment which, as Speaker, I made of you, to be chairman of the Committee of Ways and Means, beyond such agency as is in⚫volved in the opinion which, from previous acquaintance with you, I had formed of your fitness for the place, etc. Nor had you any more direct agency in your being appointed upon the committee to investigate the bank." I had not intended to publish Judge Wardlaw's letter, but this new matter makes it proper to do so. I therefore subjoin a copy of it.

The concurrence of all these witnesses proves the sincerity with which I affirmed that I made no such motion.

But it seems, however, that we are all mistaken, and that such a motion was made by me. I have not the least recollection of it, but if it be so, I do not hesitate to pass the same censure upon it which I pronounced before I knew I had any connection with it. I consider it an indelicacy which I should certainly not commit now; and I am glad that the lapse of twelve years since it occurred has so far improved my perception as to enable me to condemn and avoid the error into which I fell in 1838.

2. We are next carried back, by the president of the bank, to the history of my bill to reduce the public debt in 1841. As I understood his original charge, it was that he had been excluded a hearing before the committee, lest perchance he might expose the insidious design of the bill. Now we are told that he was absent from Columbia when the bill was before the committee, but that as soon as he returned, upon express