[CHAPTER VII.]
ASTOUNDING EVENT—SUSPENSION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS—PROCEEDINGS OF THE BANK OF QUODLIBET THEREUPON—RESOLVE OF THE DIRECTORS AGAINST SUSPENSION—CONSPIRACY AND THREATENED REVOLUTION HEADED BY FLAN. SUCKER—DIRECTORS CHANGE THEIR MIND—THEIR CONSTERNATION AND ESCAPE—REMARKABLE BRAVERY AND PRESENCE OF MIND OF THE HON. MIDDLETON FLAM—HIS SPLENDID APPEAL TO THE INSURGENTS—GENERAL JACKSON'S ORACULAR VIEWS IN REGARD TO THE SUSPENSION.
Proh hominum fidem!
It falls to my lot, at this stage of my history, to be constrained to record an event the most astounding, the most awful, the most unexpected, the most treacherous, the most ungrateful, the most flagitious—yea, the most supereminently flagitious,—that the history of mankind affords. Notwithstanding that laudatory and political ejaculation which the Hero and Sage breathed out in the evening of his brilliant career, like the last notes of the swan, "I leave this great people prosperous and happy"—notwithstanding that flattering canzonet, with which he who pledges himself to walk in the Hero and Sage's footsteps, began his illustrious course, singing as it were the morning carol of the lark—"we present an aggregate of human prosperity surely not elsewhere to be found"—the echo of these sweet sounds had not died away upon the tympana of our ravished ears, before these banks—these gentle pet banks—these fostered, favored, sugar-plum and candy-fed pet banks, with all their troop of plethoric and pampered paragon sister banks, one and all, without one pang of remorse, without one word of warning, without even, as far as we could see, one tingle of a suppressed and struggling blush, incontinently suspended specie payments!! O curas hominum! Quantum est in rebus inane!
Shall I tell it? Even the Patriotic Copperplate Bank of Quodlibet was compelled to follow in this faithless path. Not at once, I confess—not off-hand, and with such malice prepense as the others—for Nicodemus Handy had a soul above such black ingratitude—but after a pause, and, let the truth be told in extenuation, because he could not help it.
The Hon. Middleton Flam was sent for upon the first tidings of this extraordinary kicking in the traces by these high-mettled institutions—tidings which reached Quodlibet, via the canal, about eleven o'clock one morning in May. The Directors were summoned into council. What was to be done? was the general question. Anthony Hardbottle, of the firm of Barndollar & Hardbottle—a grave man and a thoughtful; a man without flash, who seldom smiles—a lean man, hard favored and simple in his outgoings and incomings; a man, who has never sported, as long as I have known him, any other coat than that snuff-brown with covered buttons, and who does not wear out above one pair of shoes in a year; a man who could never be persuaded to give so far into the times as to put on a black cravat, but has always stuck to the white:—such a man, it may be easily imagined, was not to be carried away by new-fangled notions:—he was there at the Board, in place of Theodore Fog, who was compelled two years before to withdraw his name as a candidate for re-election. This same Anthony Hardbottle, speaking under the dictates of that cautious wisdom natural to him as a merchant, answered this question of What was to be done?—by another equally laconic and pregnant with meaning——
"How much cash have we on hand?"
"One hundred and seven dollars and thirty-seven and a half cents in silver," replied Nicodemus, "and five half eagles in gold, which were brought here by our honorable President and placed on deposit, after he had used them in the last election for the purpose of showing the people what an admirable currency we were to have, as soon as Mr. Benton should succeed in making it float up the stream of the Mississippi."
Again asked Anthony Hardbottle, "What circulation have you abroad?"
"Six hundred thousand dollars," replied Nicodemus, "and a trifle over."