September 1, 1815.
...... Myself and the family are very anxious to see you, yet I am glad that your business is so good that you cannot, with propriety, leave it, yet you must always make your calculations to come as often as you can. Have you agreed to your nomination for the Legislature another session? You know your own situation best. If you think proper to take another seat, it has my approbation. I have read your oration, and I think it well done. Perhaps it is a little too severe, and may hurt the feelings of some of your friends, who have been friendly, independent of politics. I have lent it to a few people who have asked for it, and they all speak well of your performance.
Oct. 19, 1815.
...... It appears from the Lancaster Journal, you are again elected. I wish you may end the next session with the same popularity as a statesman that you gained in the last session.
Mr. Buchanan’s own account of his second term of service in the Legislature is thus given:
I was again elected a member of the House of Representatives in the State Legislature in October, 1815. The currency at that period was in great disorder throughout the Middle, Western, and Southern States, in consequence of the suspension of specie payments occasioned by the war. On the 20th of December, 1815, a resolution was adopted by the House of Representatives, instructing the Committee on Banks, “to inquire into the causes of the suspension of specie payments by the banks within this Commonwealth; and also, whether any or what measures ought to be adopted by the Legislature on this subject.” This committee was composed of Mr. McEuen, of the city; Milliken, of Mifflin; Stewart, of Fayette; and Dysart, of Crawford. On the 12th of January, 1816, Mr. McEuen made a report which concluded with a recommendation that a law should be passed, obliging the banks to pay interest on balances to each other monthly, at the rate of six per cent. per annum, after the 1st of March; also, obliging the banks refusing to pay specie for their notes after the 1st of January, 1817, to pay interest at the rate of eighteen per cent. per annum from the time of demand; and forfeiting the charters of such banks as should refuse to redeem their notes in specie after the 1st of January, 1818. A bare majority of the committee had concurred in the report. The minority had requested me to prepare a substitute for it, and offer it as soon as the report was read. This substitute concluded with a resolution, “that it is inexpedient at this time for the Legislature to adopt any compulsory measures relative to the banks.” The original report and the substitute were postponed, and no action was ever had afterwards upon either.
The substitute states the following to have been the causes of the suspension of specie payments in Pennsylvania:
1. The blockade by the enemy of the Middle and Southern seaports, the impossibility of getting their productions to market, and the consequent necessity imposed upon them to pay in specie to New England the price of the foreign merchandise imported into that portion of the Union.
2. The large loans made by banks and individuals of this and the adjacent States to the Government to sustain the war, and the small comparative loans made in New England, which were paid by an extravagant issue of bank notes. These latter bore but a small proportion to the money expended there. To make up this deficiency, the specie of the Middle and Southern States was drawn from the vaults of these banks, and was used by the New England people in commerce, or smuggled to the enemy.
3. The great demand for specie in England.