like the expositions of a juggler, meant to mystify the audience still more.

A

The final catastrophe of the Bank has always affected the judgment which all students of its history have formed of the merits of its struggle with Jackson. The Jackson men always claimed that the end proved that Jackson and his coterie were right all the time. This has probably been the general verdict. The whigs felt the weight of the inference, and they tried to distinguish between the Bank of the United States and the United States Bank of Pennsylvania. A little reflection will show that both these views are erroneous. bank may go on well and be sound for twenty years, and then go wrong. It may make mistakes and recover, and then make more mistakes and perish. We must go by the facts all the way along. The State bank and the national bank of the United States had a continuous, an integral life. The attempt to save one and condemn the other, aside from an investigation of the merits, is a partisan proceeding. It is not sound historically or financially. We have now reached as just an opinion as we can form about the Bank up to the time of its State charter.

The State Bank started on its career under very bad auspices. It never threw off the suspicion which attached to its legislative birth. It was too large for its new sphere, yet pride prevented its reduction. It had other aims than to win profits by sound banking. It wanted to prove itself

necessary, or to show itself a public benefactor, or to sustain the rivalry of Philadelphia with New York. Biddle, freed from the restraints of the old organization, launched out into sensational banking, and tested his theories of banking to the utmost. There is scarcely anything vicious and unsound in banking which the great Bank did not illustrate during the next five years. Its officers plundered it. Its end was so ignominious that no one wanted to remember that he had ever believed in it.

On the 1st of February, 1836, the account of the Bank1 showed a surplus of $7,800,000, which was expected to pay off the bonus, notes, etc. There were $20,000,000 loaned on stocks, and there was the State bonus, the government stock, and the circulation of the old bank to be paid. New stock was sold to pay off the government stock. £1,000,000 were borrowed in London, and 12,500,000 francs in Paris.2 Jaudon was sent to England as agent of the Bank. In May, the money market at New York being very stringent, the Bank was asked for aid, which it gave.3 By an act of June 15, 1836, Congress repealed the 14th section of the Bank charter. This put an end to the receipt of the notes of the old Bank by the Treasury, and crippled the circulation of the Bank. In October there was a report that the Bank would surrender its State charter if it could

1 60 Niles, 106.

850 Niles, 267.

2 First report, 1841, 60 Niles, 105.

get back its bonus.1 In that same month, however, Biddle wrote another letter to Adams to show the wrong of trying to repeal the State charter. June 23d, Congress authorized the Secretary of the Treasury to treat with the Bank for the payment of the government stock. No agreement was reached, but, February 25, 1837, the Bank sent a memorial to the Speaker, in which it offered to pay off the public shares, at $115.58 per share, in four instalments, September, 1837-38-39-40. This proposition was accepted, March 3, 1837, and the instalments were all paid.

In his message, 1836, Jackson discharged a last broadside at the Bank. He seemed to be as angry that the Bank had escaped annihilation as he was in 1818 that Billy Bowlegs got across the Suwanee river. He complained that the Bank had not paid off the public stock, and was reissuing its old notes. This latter proceeding was stopped by an act of July 6, 1838. The Bank failed three times during the years of commercial distress which followed, namely, May 10, 1837, with all the other banks; October 9, 1839, when it carried down with it all which had resumed, except those in New York and a few in New England; February 4, 1841, when it was entirely ruined. Its stockholders lost all their capital.

Biddle had resigned March 29, 1839, but he had been so identified with the Bank that its ruin was attributed to him. He fell into disgrace. He 1 51 Niles, 113.

was arraigned for conspiracy to plunder the stockholders, but escaped on a technicality. He died, insolvent and broken-hearted, February 27, 1844, aged fifty-eight.1

Webster declared, in 1842, that a bank of the United States founded on a private subscription was an "obsolete idea; "2 but perhaps the unkindest cut of all was that the Whig Almanac for 1843 could refer to "Nick Biddle " as a rascal, and to as one which was 66 corruptly man

"his Bank

aged."

1 Ingersoll, 285; a very touching description of Biddle's last

years.

2 2 Webster's Works, 135.

CHAPTER XII

THE NEW SPIRIT IN VARIOUS POINTS OF FOREIGN AND DOMESTIC POLICY

Quarrel with France. - The neglect of France to fulfil the stipulations of the treaty of July 4, 1831, offered the occasion for the most important diplomatic negotiation in which Jackson was engaged. In his message of 1834, he gave a full account of the treaty and of the neglect of the French Chambers, at two sessions, to appropriate money to meet engagements which had been made, on behalf of the French nation, by the constitutional authorities of France. The King had shown strong personal interest in the matter, and had exerted himself to secure a satisfactory settlement and to prevent any bad feeling from arising between the two nations. In the mean time the United States had reduced the duties on wine, according to the engagement in the treaty, by an act of July 13, 1832, and France was getting the benefit of the treaty without performing her share of it. It seemed to Jackson that this state of things called for spirited action. Moreover,

1 Livingston's dispatch, 47 Niles, 417. Rives came home in 1831. Livingston went out in 1833.