Loading ...Importance of the Subject.
In an address to the stockholders of the United States Bank, at their meeting in 1S28, Mr. N. Biddle, the President of that institution, stated, that, of five hundred and forty-four Banks in the United States, one hundred and forty-four had been openly declared bankrupt, and about fifty more had suspended business.
Mr. Gallatin, in his “Considerations on the Currency and Banking System,” published in 1831, gives a list of 329 State Banks then in operation, having nominal capitals of the amount of $108,301,898, which, added to the capital of the United States Bank, made the whole nominal capital of these institutions, upwards of one hundred and forty-three millions of dollars.
These Banks issue notes which serve as substitutes for coin.
They grant credits on their books, and transfer the amount of credit from one merchant to another.
They receive money on deposit.
They buy and sell bills of exchange.
They discount mercantile notes.
They buy and sell public stocks.
All these are important functions, and if only one of them be ill performed, the community must suffer inconvenience.
The Banks are scattered through nearly all the States and Territories which compose our Union ; but they may all be embraced in one view, inasmuch as they all substitute paper for specie, and credit for cash, and are all endowed with privileges which individuals do not possess.
By their various operations, immediate and remote, they must affect, for good or for evil, every individual in the country. Banking is not a local, temporary, or occasional cause. It is general and permanent. Like the atmosphere, it presses every where. Its effects are felt alike in the palace and the hovel.
To the customs of trade which Banking introduces, all are obliged to conform. A man may, indeed, neither borrow money from the Banks, nor deposit money in their vaults : but if he buys or sells it is with the medium which they furnish, and in all bis contracts he must have reference to the standard of value which they establish. There is no legal disability to carrying on commerce in the old-fashioned safe way : but the customs of Banking have introduced a practical disability. It is no longer possible for the merchant to buy and sell for ready money only, or for real money. He must give and take credit, and give and take paper money, or give up business.
Bank paper is not a legal tender in the discharge of private debts : but it has become, in point of fact, the only actual tender, and the sudden refusal of creditors to receive it would put it out of the power of debtors to comply with their engagements.
Credit, the great rival of cash, is completely controlled by the Banks, and distributed by them as suits their discretion.
These institutions may contribute little to the production of wealth ; but they furnish the means to many for the acquisition of wealth ; they appear to be the chief regulating cause of the present distribution of wealth, and as such are entitled to particular attention.
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