existed in any nation in the world: whereas, in the two short intervals during which no National Bank existed, public and private credit were greatly impaired, and, in the latter instance, the fiscal operations of the government were almost entirely arrested. In the second place, it is worthy of special notice, that, in both the instances in which Congress has created a Bank, it has been done under circumstances calculated to give the highest authority to the decision. The first instance, as has already been remarked, was in the primitive days of the Republic, when the patriots of the Revolution and the sages of the Federal Convention were the leading members both of the executive and legislative councils, and when General Washington, who at the head of her armies had conducted his country to independence, and at the head of the Convention had presided over those deliberations which resulted in the establishment of the present Constitution, was the acknowledged President of a people undistracted by party divisions. The second instance was under circumstances of a very different, but equally decisive, character. We find the very party which had so recently defeated the proposition to renew the charter of the old Bank, severely schooled both by adversity and experience, magnanimously sacrificing the pride of consistency and the prejudices of party at the shrine of patriotism. It may be said, without disparagement, that an assembly of higher talent and purer patriotism has never existed since the days of the Revolution than the Congress by which the present Bank was incorporated. If ever a political party existed, of which it might be truly said that all the ends they aimed at were their country's,' it was the Republican" [Democratic] "party of that day. They had just conducted the country through the perils of a war waged in defence of her rights and honor; and, elevating their views far above the narrow and miserable ends of party strife, sought only to advance the permanent happiness of the people. It was to this great end that they established the present Bank.

"In this review, it will be no less instructive than curious to notice some of the changes made in the opinions of prominent men, yielding to the authority of experience. Mr. Madison, who was the leading opponent of the Bank created in 1791, recommended and sanctioned the Bank created in 1816; and Mr. Clay, who strenuously opposed the renewal of the charter in 1811, as strenuously supported the proposition to grant the charter in 1816.

"That may be said of the Bank charter which can be said of few contested questions of constitutional power. Both the great political parties that have so long directed the country have declared it to be constitutional, and there are but very few of the prominent men of either party who do not stand committed in its favor. When to this imposing array of authorities the Committee add the solemn and unanimous decision of the Supreme Court, in a case which fully and distinctly submitted the constitutional question to their cognizance, may they not ask, in the language of Mr. Dallas, Can it be deemed a violation of the right of private opinion to consider the constitutionality of a National Bank as a question for ever settled and at rest?' . . .

"The earliest and the principal objection urged against the constitutionality of a National Bank was that Congress had not the power to create corporations. That Congress has a distinct and substantive power to create corporations, without reference to the objects intrusted to its jurisdiction, is a proposition which never has been maintained, within the knowledge of the Committee; but that any one of the powers expressly conferred upon Congress is subject to the limitation, that it shall not be carried into effect by the agency of a corporation, is a proposition which cannot be maintained, in the opinion of the Committee.

"If Congress, under the authority to pass all laws necessary and proper for carrying into effect the powers vested in all or any of the departments of the government, may rightfully pass a law inflicting the punishment of death, without any other authority, it is difficult to perceive why it may not pass a law, under the same authority, for the more humble purpose of creating a corporation. The power of creating a corporation is one of the lowest attributes, or, more properly speaking, incidents of sovereign power. The chartering of a Bank, for example, does not authorize the corporation to do any thing which the individuals composing it might not do without the charter. It is the right of every individual of the Union to give credit to whom he chooses, and to obtain credit where he can get it. It is not the policy of any commercial country to restrict the free circulation of credit, whether in the form of promissory notes, bills of exchange, or bank-notes. The charter of the Bank of the United States, therefore, merely enables the corporation to do in an artificial capacity, and with more convenience, what it would be lawful for the individual corporators to do without incorporation. . . .

"But the question really presented for their determination is not between a metallic and a paper currency, but between a paper currency of uniform value, and subject to the control of the only power competent to its regulation, and a paper currency of vary ing and fluctuating value, and subject to no common or adequate control whatever. On this question, it would seem that there could hardly exist a difference of opinion; and that this is substantially the question involved in considering the expediency of a National Bank, will satisfactorily appear by a comparison of the state of the currency previous to the establishment of the present Bank and its condition for the last ten years.

"Soon after the expiration of the charter of the first Bank of the United States, an immense number of local Banks sprung up under the pecuniary exigencies produced by the withdrawal of so large an amount of bank credit as necessarily resulted from the winding up of its concerns, an amount falling very little short of fifteen millions of dollars. These Banks, being entirely free from the salutary control which the Bank of the United States had recently exercised over the local institutions, commenced that system of imprudent trading and excessive issues which speedily involved the country in all the embarrassments of a disordered currency. The extraordinary stimulus of a heavy war expenditure derived prin

cipally from loans, and a corresponding multiplication of local Banks, chartered by the double-score in some of the States, hastened the catastrophe; which must have occurred, at no distant period, without those extraordinary causes. The last year of the war presented the singular and melancholy spectacle of a nation abounding in resources, a people abounding in self-devoted patriotism, and a government reduced to the very brink of avowed bankruptcy solely for the want of a national institution, which, at the same time that it would have facilitated the government loans and other treasury operations, would have furnished a circulating medium of general credit in every part of the Union. In this view of the subject, the Committee are fully sustained by the opinion of Mr. Dallas, then Secretary of the Treasury, and by the concurring and almost unanimous opinion of all parties in Congress; for, whatever diversity of opinion prevailed as to the proper basis and organization of a Bank, almost every one agreed that a National Bank of some sort was indispensably necessary to rescue the country from the greatest of financial calamities.

"The Committee will now present a brief exposition of the state of currency at the close of the war; of the injury which resulted from it, as well to the government as to the community; and their reasons for believing that it could not have been restored to a sound condition, and cannot now be preserved in that condition, without the agency of an institution such as the Bank of the United States. "The price current appended to this report will exhibit a scale of depreciation in the local currency, ranging through various degrees to 20, and even to 25, per cent. Among the principal Eastern cities, Washington and Baltimore were the points at which the depreciation was greatest. The paper of the Banks in those places was from 20 to 22 per cent below par. At Philadelphia, the depreciation was considerably less; though even there it was from 17 to 18 per cent. In New York and Charleston, it was from 7 to 10 per cent. But, in the interior of the country where Banks were established, the depreciation was even greater than at Washington and Baltimore. In the Western part of Pennsylvania, and particularly at Pittsburgh, it was 25 per cent. These statements, however, of the relative depreciation of bank paper at various places, as compared with specie, give a very inadequate idea of the enormous evil inflicted upon the community by the excessive issues of bank

"A very serious evil, already hinted at, which grew out of the relative depreciation of bank paper at the different points of importation, was its inevitable tendency to draw all the importations of foreign merchandise to the cities where the depreciation was greatest, and divert them from those where the currency was comparatively sound. If the Bank of the United States had not been established, and the government had been left without any alternative but to receive the depreciated local currency, it is difficult to imagine the extent to which the evasion of the revenue laws would have been carried. Every State would have had an interest to encourage the excessive issues of its Banks and increase the degra

dation of its currency, with a view to attract foreign commerce. Even in the condition which the currency had reached in 1816, Boston and New York and Charleston would have found it advantageous to derive the supplies of foreign merchandise through Baltimore; and commerce would, undoubtedly, have taken that direction, had not the currency been corrected. To avoid this injurious diversion of foreign imports, Massachusetts and New York and South Carolina would have been driven, by all motives of self-defence and self-interest, to degrade their respective currencies, at least to a par with the currency of Baltimore; and thus a rivalry in the career of depreciation would have sprung up to which no limit can be assigned. As the tendency of this state of things would have been to cause the largest of the revenue to be collected at a few places, and in the most depreciated of the local currency, it would have followed that a very small part of that revenue would have been disbursed at the points where it was collected. The government would consequently have been compelled to sustain a heavy loss upon the transfer of its funds to the points of expenditure. The annual loss which would have resulted from these causes alone cannot be estimated at a less sum than $2,000,000.

"But the principal loss which resulted from the relative depreciation of bank paper at different places, and its want of general credit, was that sustained by the community in the great operations of commercial exchange. The extent of these operations, annually, may be safely estimated at $60,000,000. Upon this sum, the loss sustained by the merchants and planters and farmers and manufacturers was probably not less than an average of 10 per cent, being the excess of the rate of exchange between its natural rate in a sound state of the currency, and beyond the rate to which it has been actually reduced by the operations of the Bank of the United States. It will be thus perceived that an annual tax of $6,000,000 was levied from the industrious and productive classes, by the large moneyed capitalists in our commercial cities who were engaged in the business of brokerage. . . .

"But no adequate conception can be formed of the evils of a depreciated currency, without looking beyond the relative depreciation at different places to the general depreciation of the entire mass. It appears from the report of Mr. Crawford, the Secretary of the Treasury, in 1820, that, during the general suspension of specie payments by the local Banks in the years 1815 and 1816, the circulating medium of the United States had reached the aggregate amount of $110,000,000, and that in the year 1819 it had been reduced to $45,000,000, being a reduction of 59 per cent in the short period of four years. The Committee are inclined to the opinion, that the severe and distressing operation of restoring a vicious. currency to a sound state, by the calling in of bank paper and the curtailment of bank discounts, had carried the reduction of the currency, in 1819, to a point somewhat lower than was consistent with the just requirements of the community for a circulating medium; and that the bank discounts have been gradually enlarged since that time, so as to satisfy those requirements. It will be assumed,

therefore, that the circulating medium of the United States has been $55,000,000 for the last ten years, taking the average.

"Even upon this assumption, it will follow that the national currency has been 100 per cent more valuable for the last ten years than it was in 1816. In other words, two dollars would purchase no more of any commodity in 1816 than one dollar has been capable 'of purchasing at any time since 1817. . .

"The Committee have given this part of the subject an attentive and careful examination; and they cannot estimate the pecuniary losses of the government, sustained exclusively for the want of a sound currency and an efficient system of finance, at a sum less than $46,000,000. If they shall make this apparent, the House will have something like a standard for estimating the individual losses of the community.

"The government borrowed, during the short period of the war, $80,000,000, at an average discount of 15 per cent; giving certificates of stock amounting to $80,000,000 in exchange for $68,000,000 in such bank paper as could be obtained. In this statement, treasury notes are considered as stock at 20 per cent discount. Upon the very face of the transaction, therefore, there was a loss of $12,000,000, which would in all probability have been saved if the treasury had been aided by such an institution as the Bank of the United States. But the sum of $68,000,000 received by the government was in a depreciated currency, not more than half as . valuable as that in which the stock given in exchange for it has been and will be redeemed. Here, then, is another loss of $34,000,000, resulting incontestably and exclusively from the depreciation of the currency, and making, with the sum lost by the discount, $46,000,000. While, then, the government sustained this great pecuniary loss in less than three years of war, amounting annually to more than the current expenses of the government in time of peace, it is worth while to inquire who were the persons who profited to this enormous amount by the derangement of the currency? It will be found that the whole benefit of this speculation upon the necessities of the government was realized by stockjobbers and money brokers, by the very same class of persons who profited so largely by the business of commercial exchanges in consequence of the disorders of the currency, and who have the same interest in the recurrence of those disorders as lawyers have in litigation, or physicians in the diseases of the human frame. Having presented these general views of the evils which existed previous to the establishment of the Bank of the United States, it remains for the Committee to inquire how far this institution has effected a remedy of those evils. . . .

"It has been already stated that it has saved the community from the immense losses resulting from a high and fluctuating state of the exchanges. It now remains to show its effect in equalizing the currency. In this respect, it has been productive of results more salutary than were anticipated by the most sanguine advocates of the policy of establishing the Bank. It has actually furnished a circulating medium more uniform than specie. This proposition is