FOOTNOTES:
[M] The Savannah branch had out only 500,000 dollars in bills. The collector of the port accumulated them, as they were received for customs duties, and one day a broker presented himself at the counter with 380,000 dollars in bills, for which he demanded specie; but the disappearance of the bills of the branch from circulation had not been unnoticed, and funds had been provided for any exigency. Payment was, therefore, instantly made, and the broker, not knowing what to do with so much specie, was obliged to request the cashier to receive it in deposit.
[N] New York is the chief seat of commerce, but Philadelphia is more central, and is, besides, the city of American capitalists. The removal to New York would also require the transference of the mint and some other public offices to that city, at great expense.
[LETTER VI.]
PROGRESS OF THE STRUGGLE.—NEW POWERS.
Baltimore, March 1, 1834.
Failures begin to be frequent in the United States, particularly in New York and Pennsylvania; the great commercial and manufacturing houses are shaking. Meanwhile the Senators and Representatives in Congress are making speeches on the crisis, its causes, and consequences. Three months have already been taken up in discussing the question, whether the Secretary of the Treasury had or had not the right to withdraw the public deposits from the vaults of the Bank, without that institution having given any just cause of complaint, and merely because it was strongly suspected of aristocratical tendencies. The resolutions which have given rise to these debates, have been referred by the Senate to the Committee on Finance, and by the House to the Committee of Ways and Means. Debates will rise on the reports of these committees, on petitions and memorials, and incidental matters, and, I am told, will last two or three months longer. This slowness is at first glance difficult to be understood, among a people, which, above all things, strives to save time, and which is so much given to haste and despatch, that its most suitable emblem would be a locomotive engine or a steamboat, just as the Centaurs were anciently confounded with their horses. From all the large towns of the North, committees appointed by great public meetings, bring to Washington memorials signed by thousands, calling for prompt and efficient measures to put an end to the crisis. On the other hand, the partisans of the Administration find fault with the prolixity of the legislators. The calmness, or rather phlegm, which the Americans have inherited from their English ancestors, is kept undisturbed in both houses of Congress, and the solemn debate goes on. One speaker for example, Mr Benton, occupied four sessions, four whole days, with his speech, which led Mr Calhoun to observe, that the Senator from Missouri took up more time in expressing his opinion on a single fact, than the French people had done in achieving a revolution. But these interminable delays ought not to be too lightly condemned, and for myself I only shrug my shoulders, when I hear some impatient individuals asserting that Congress would be more expeditious, were it not for the eight dollars a day which they receive during the session. This delay may seem irreconcileable with one of the distinctive traits of the American character, but in reality is imperiously demanded by the form and spirit of the government, by the institutions and political habits of the country.
The general discussion in Congress has no other object than to open a full and free public inquest, which enables each and all to make up an opinion. It gives rise to a discussion of the question by the innumerable journals in the United States (where there are 1200 political newspapers), by the twentyfour legislatures, each composed of two houses, and by the public meetings in the cities and towns. It is an animated exchange of arguments of every calibre and every degree, of contradictory resolutions, mixed up with applauses and hisses, of exaggerated eulogies and brutal invectives. A stranger, who finds himself suddenly thrown into the midst of this hubbub, is confounded and stupefied; he seems to himself to be present in the primeval or the final chaos, or at least at the general breaking up of the Union. But after a certain time some gleams of light break forth from these thick clouds, from the bosom of this confusion,—gleams, which the good sense of the people hails with joy, and which light up the Congress. We see here the realization of the Forum on an immense scale, the Forum with its tumult, its cries, its pasquinades, but also with its sure instincts, and its flashes of native and untaught genius. It is a spectacle, in its details, occasionally prosaic and repulsive, but, as a whole, imposing as the troubled ocean. In a country like this, it is impossible to avoid these delays; first, because it takes a long time to interchange words between the frontiers of Canada and the Gulf of Mexico, and secondly, because nothing is so dangerous as precipitation in a Forum, whether it only covers the narrow space between the Rostra and the Tarpeian Rock, or extends from Lake Champlain to the mouth of the Mississippi, and from the Illinois to the Cape of Florida. Unfortunately the session in the Forum lasts longer than usual this time. The demagogues have set the popular passions in violent agitation; the sovereign people has allowed itself to be magnetised by its flatterers, and it will require some time to be able to shake off the trance. The healing beam, which will fix the gaze of the multitude and dissipate the charm that envelopes them, has not yet broke forth from the East, or from the West; meanwhile the merchants and manufacturers, who are stretched upon the coals, writhe in vain; there is no answer to their cries.
The Bank, meantime, disappears from sight and keeps silence; it continues to attend to its own business, and prudently confines itself to that alone. Its best policy is to avoid as much as possible making itself the subject of common talk. The demagogues have raised such a cry of monopoly and aristocracy, that the people have come to believe the Bank a colossus of aristocracy, a prop of monopoly. These words monopoly and aristocracy are here, what the word Jesuits was in France a few years ago; if the enemies of any institution can write on its back this kind of abracadabra, it is pointed at, hooted at, and hissed at by the multitude. Such is the magic power of these words, that speculators employ them on all occasions as charms to draw customers. For example, at the head of the advertisements of steamboats you read in staring characters: No Monopoly!!! It is pitiful to say that the Bank of the United States has a monopoly, when there are no less than five hundred other banks in the country; by this course of reasoning one might convict the sun of enjoying a monopoly of light. And yet the multitude has believed it, and believes it still. Now the best policy for those against whom such a storm of unpopularity is raised, is to run for port, as the sailors do in a gale of wind. The Bank has twice attempted to strike a blow, by taking advantage of the mistakes of its enemies, and both times the stroke has recoiled on itself.
The first time, the subject of dispute was a draft on the French government, which was sold to the Bank last year by the Federal government, and which France refused to pay; the draft was, therefore, protested, and then paid by the correspondent of the Bank in Paris in honour of the endorser. In this affair the Executive of the United States committed two faults: 1. It was an act of indiscretion to draw on the French government, before the Chambers had made the necessary appropriation for paying the stipulated indemnity; 2. Instead of drawing on the French government by a bill of exchange, and selling the bill to the Bank, without knowing whether it would be accepted, the Executive would have conducted itself with more propriety towards France, towards the Bank, and towards itself, if it had authorized the Bank to receive the moneys paid by the French government, in the capacity of its agent or attorney. By the commercial practice of all countries, and of this in particular, the Bank had a right to damages, and it put in its claim. Its object in taking this step, was much more to expose the errors of the Executive, than to pocket the sum of 50,000 or 80,000 dollars. But its adversaries immediately raised the cry, that the Bank was not contented with exacting enormous sums from the sweat of the people to the profit of the stockholders, (observe that the dividends of the Bank are moderate, compared with those of other banking companies in the country, and that the Federal government is itself the largest share-holder); but that it was now attempting, by petty chicanery, to extort a portion of the public revenue, and to bury the people's money in Biddle's pockets. To this reasoning, and it passes for demonstration, the multitude answered by imprecations against monopoly and the moneyed aristocracy, and by renewed shouts of Hurrah for Jackson!