ized? Mr. Lippincott, the chairman of the committee who reported on the general correctness of the accounts which were presented at the close of Mr. Biddle's presidency, has answered, that in making that report he was deceived, that he knew nothing of the circumstances attending the items which made up the sum total, and that as long as he was in an official position, "these reports were always previously prepared by the officers of the bank (and as now appears) very artfully and with great circumspection." Mr. Biddle, the president of the bank during the time the transactions in question occured, admits his agency, and after endeavoring to diminish the odium which fell upon him by sharing it with Mr. Lippincott, states that he "finds it difficult to recall" the facts under which the disbursements were made.+ $827,000 were therefore paid out of the vaults of the bank without account or without examination, through the inattention of a committee that suffered itself to be deceived, and through the malfeasance of an officer who has "been able to recall" enough to show that he was the deceiver. It remains clear, therefore, that the heading of the present section has been supported, and that there have been losses, and losses too, the most vast and the most disgraceful, from the negligence and the fraud of the officers and agents of the bank. IV. Political Interference. It would be derogatory to the intelligence and caution with which the Bank of the United States was for sixteen years managed, to suppose that the measures, which were taken by it to bring round a change of public sentiment, should have escaped beyond the privacy within which they were prepared. The springs which were moved were moved in secret; and except in the great effect which they produced, not so much upon the people in a body, as upon the delegated agents of the people who could more easily be dealt with, their force is to be estimated only by the sudden revolutions which took place wherever the sphere was not too extensive for their action, or the object too trifling for their interference. It was not till after General Jackson's * Mr. Lippincott's Statement, May 4, 1841. VOL. XXXI. - 3D. S. VOL. XIII. NO. I. 4 accession to the presidency, that a necessity was felt for exertion. During Mr. Monroe's term of office politics had suffered a calm, the prominent land marks of party had become hidden, and the great objects of contention, which in the preceding fifty years had cleft the country in twain, were quietly conceded or quietly assumed. The navy was no longer an object of concern by one party alone, but was fostered by both. Internal improvements were stepping gradually along, till the objections with which they had been met were given The bank itself had been chartered, and was to carry up. out for fifteen years an existence which nothing but gross violations on its part could shorten. But when General Jackson expressed in his first message an opinion inconsistent with the future rechartering of the institution, a new sphere of action was opened. The bank came forward in the fields to fight through its chosen champions for a prize which involved its corporate existence. It employed, as the number of its assailants multiplied and their prowess increased, fresh engines for its defence. Presses changed their political complexion at periods, when the loans which they had just received cast a slur on their candor, if not their honesty, in the revolution which had been just effected. Gentlemen, who had been selected to office on account of their professed hostility to a national bank, and particularly to the bank as then managed, relaxed their principles in a way that provoked suspicion. It is a question to be solved by future examinations, which it is to be trusted will be carried on more fearlessly in a court of justice than they could be before the assembled stockholders, whether the immense sums, which were poured away without vouchers, were not spent in washing away the consistency of virtues which before had defied the aggression of tempest and the corruption of calm. Till that period arrives, till the period arrives when a detailed account shall be given in of those vast expenditures, whose suspicious destiny may be gathered from the studious mystery with which their disbursement was attended, the evidences which are given of the political action of the bank can only be collected from scanty materials, which from accident or waywardness it let drop. The following instances may be taken as well authenticated by the reports both of its own officers and of the committees who were appointed by the House of Representatives to examine its proceedings. An article on Banks and Currency was published in Novem ber, 1830, in the American Quarterly Review, which was viewed as exhibiting with great distinctness the claims which were advanced by the Bank of the United States to a recharter. It was submitted by the president - Mr. Biddle-to the directors as a paper worthy of their patronage, and at his suggestion the following resolution was passed; "Resolved, that the president be authorized to take such measures in regard to the circulation of the contents of an article on banks and currency, published in the American Quarterly Review, either in whole or in part, as he may deem most expedient for the interests of the bank." The power thus entrusted was exerted, as may be imagined, within no narrow limits.* On the 11th of March, 1831, a resolution was adopted by the board, as recited in the report of the government directors, authorizing the president of the bank to cause to be prepared "and circulated such documents and papers as may communicate to the people information in regard to the nature and operations of the bank."* The checks, therefore, which had lain on the president's hands, were on a touch removed. He was endowed with an untrammelled control over the funds of the bank for purposes the most dangerous in which they could be employed. He became the daysman between the press and the money sacks, and while he drew forth from the latter handfuls of the gold which then was reposing in quiet in the vaults, he found writers who could be bought, and papers which could be bribed, to become the channels of his operations. It was under such influences that the presidential election of 1832 took place. The bank entered into the struggle with its monstrous strength exerted to the full. The nature of its operations are gradually coming into view; and in the great deficits that are noticed in its means at that period, when taken in connexion with the remarkable charges which cotemporaneously took place, an estimate may be made of the extent as well as of the character of its movements. The Committee of Ways and Means in the House of Representatives in 1834, whose report has already been twice referred to, laid open, as far as their limited opportunities allowed them, the dealings of the bank at the period when, as a national institution, its energies were most called into play. For the last half of 1829, * Report of Committee of Ways and Means, March 4th, 1834. according to their statements, the expenditures, in compliance with the resolution which has been just set forth, were $3,765 94, giving an average for the year, of $7,531 88. In 1830 they increased to $14,081 47, about $7000 of which were for "printing and distributing the report of the Committee of Ways and Means, and Mr. Gallatin's pamphlets." In 1831 they increased to $43,204 79, and in 1832 they were $38,667 88, of which $26,543 72 were incurred in the last half year, including the presidential election. Of the whole amount, about $24,000, as stated by the government directors, no vouchers were given. The president alone was cognizant of the manner of the application of the sums thus disbursed, and as no memoranda were kept of his proceedings, they are as yet unknown, except to those who were the recipients or the dispensers of the corruption he employed. It was mentioned under another head, that within the course of six years $1,018,640 15 were withdrawn without account from the coffers of the bank. The purpose for which they were used has not transpired. That they were employed either, in the first place, in swelling the private fortune of individuals, or secondly, in the furtherance of disastrous speculations, or thirdly, in political corruption, seems evident; and it is to be feared, that, however great may be the draughts which were carried off in the two first channels, the larger part of the immense sum thus embezzled was expended in objects which may be classed in the last division. There have been epochs in the history of the bank, when the rock of opposition was most rigid, and yet when by a touch of the wise man's wand it melted into floods. There has been a legislature, one branch of which at least had pledged itself by the most solemn ties to check to the utmost an institution so mighty and so ambitious; but which changed when it was brought to the trial, with a rapidity which made a mockery of mature and rational conviction. It may be said, also, that the public itself, by some large sum given to it for the prosecution of some favorite enterprise, may be corrupted as surely as the individuals who compose it; and it is clear, that if the people of Pennsylvania had had but one mouth, there could have been no plumb so tempting as that which was offered by the bank, on its application for a charter. $2,500,000 were paid as a bonus to the State, being at the rate of $8 to each of the qualified voters of the time; and it may be supposed, that if the bank was able to disburse so immense an amount for the charter itself, it may have found itself equal, all scruples of conscience being out of the question, to disburse a sum much smaller for purposes more urgent. Till judicial process shall have sifted the subject from the mystery that clings around it, the full extent of the evil will not be known; but from legislative report, from internal investigation, and from personal admissions, there is enough known even at present, to show that the Bank of the United States, whenever its condition was such as to make it appear expedient, has interfered extensively with the political affairs of the country. V. Fluctuations of the Monetary System On the 7th of January 1817, the bank went into operation, and arrangements were immediately entered into with the other banks, for the speedy and simultaneous resumption of specie payments. The most unceasing efforts were made on the part, of the new institution to force its paper into circulation, and to extend its loans within a circle which should only be bounded by the commercial capabilities of the country. The multiplication of its notes was checked only by the physical inability of the president and cashier to sign beyond a certain amount. Whatever contractions had been made by the surrounding banks were amply compensated by the immense expansions of the national institution. The currency became as depressed as it had been in the worst times which it had yet experienced. Prices rose; and capitalists forsook land as a subject of investment, and poured out their coffers, in a spirit of the wildest speculation, on the stocks which were thrown so profusely into the market. The discounts of the bank were increased to dimensions altogether incompatible with the quantity of its capital paid in, and what made the evil still more fatal was that, instead of being confined to mercantile paper, they were granted principally to stockholders on the hypothecation of the stock of the bank itself. Instead of $7,000,000 of specie, as required by the charter, being paid in before the commencement of operations, it is estimated that but little more than one third of that sum was received. The resumption of specie payment drew daily more near; and the directors, aware of the incapacity of the bank to meet in its bloated state the demands which would be pressing upon it, began a rapid curtailment of |