Dear Sir:
Permit me to introduce to your acquaintance and attention Mr. Seton, Cashier of the Bank of New-York. He is just setting out for Philadelphia to procure materials and information in the forms of business. I recommend him to you, because I am persuaded you will with pleasure facilitate his object. Personally, I dare say you will be pleased with him.
He will tell you of our embarrassments and prospects. I hope an incorporation of the two banks, which is evidently the interest of both, has put an end to differences in Philadelphia. Here a wild and impracticable scheme of a land bank stands in our way; the projectors of it persevering in spite of the experience they have, that all the mercantile and moneyed influence is against it.
A. Hamilton.
WILLIAM SETON TO HAMILTON.
Philadelphia, 27 March, 1784.
Dear Sir:
You will observe by my letter of this day to our President, that I have been requested to postpone my visit to the bank until they shall be well informed that the Bank of New-York has, or actually will, obtain a charter. Although I am confident this is only an ostensible reason for not wishing to see me at the bank, it will be highly necessary I should be regularly informed of what is doing in this respect, that I may be able to speak fully and with firmness to the subject; therefore, exclusive of any letter the director may write to me, I trust you will communicate to me whatever may appear to you essential for me to know.
The fact is (and which cannot be communicated to the many, and therefore not mentioned in my official letter), their motive for not wishing to see me at the bank just now, arises from their being at present in very great confusion—the opposition of the new bank began it, and being pressed so hard by this opposition, they were obliged to lay themselves so open, that it evidently appeared, if carried further, it would strike too fatal a blow. Therefore, for the safety of the community at large, it became absolutely necessary to drop the idea of a new bank, and to join hand in hand to relieve the old bank from the shock it had received. Gold and silver had been extracted in such amounts that discounting was stopped, and for this fortnight past not any business has been done at the bank in this way. The distress it has occasioned to those dependent on circulation and engaged in large speculations, is severe; and, as if their cup of misery must overflow, by the last arrival from Europe, intelligence is received that no less a sum than £60,000 sterling of Mr. Morris’s bills, drawn for the Dutch loan, are under protest. It is well known that the bank, by some means or other, must provide for this sum. The child must not desert its parent in distress, and, such is their connection, that whatever is fatal to the one must be so to the other. However, the man who has more than once, by his consummate abilities, saved the American Empire from ruin, will no doubt be found equal to overcome these temporary inconveniences, and to restore universal confidence and good order. I trust you will be guarded in your conversation with others on this subject, lest it might recoil on me, and not only place me in a disagreeable situation, but defeat the purposes of my coming there. I have had several interviews with our friend Gov. Morris; he is for making the bank of New-York a branch of the bank of North America, but we differ widely in our ideas of the benefit that would result from such a connection.
If it will not be intruding too much upon your time and goodness, may I request that you will now and then inform me what is doing by our Legislature, and permit me to assure you, that it will ever give me singular pleasure to have it in my power to evince the respect and esteem with which