not maintain specie payments. Why, then, make it at all without a provision for suspension? This leaves us face to face with the fact that the mismanagement of the war finances was forcing the federal government to set up a paper money machine.
February 6th, another bill was introduced in the Senate for a bank with $50 millions capital, $20 millions in treasury notes, fundable in six per cent. stock, $15 millions in six per cent. stock, $5 millions in specie, $10 miliions by the government in four per cent. stock. It was not to pay its notes in specie until the last installment on the capital was paid. There were to be five equal installments, the first payable April 1st, and the four others quarterly thereafter. Congress might at any time authorize a suspension of specie payments on petition of the directors. February 10th, the Senate refused to strike out the last provision and passed the bill. February 17th, the day on which the news of the signing of the treaty of Ghent arrived, and as it appears, under some premonitions of that news, the bill was indefirotely postponed in the House. Jacob Barker, who had a great speculation on this project, was in Washington at the time. He says that the bill had passed both Houses, and lay on the clerk's table for assent to be given by the Senate to a change in respect to the date of organization, "when an express on its way to Alexandria for a speculation in flour passed through Washington with the news of peace, which so elated Congress that the members left their seats without waiting for an adjournment, and they could not again be induced to consider the question of a national bank during that session. This bill was framed with a view to induce moneyed men to subscribe to its stock. It was the best ever devised. It did not impose any bonus, and if it had then become a law would have worked wonders." * * * "Had the news been delayed a single hour, the bill would have passed and its stock would have been worth 100 per cent. premium."[1]
At this point, then, all demand for a national bank as a means of war finance ceased, but a new demand arose for it to regulate the currency, which had now fallen into great disorder. We lay emphasis here on the story of the legislative birth of the second Bank of the United States, the circumstances which led to it, the motives which impelled the actors, and the necessities which gave the controlling ideas, because this is all-important with respect to the character of the institution which was produced. This has been sufficiently apparent already in the struggle over the question whether the bank, for war finance, should suspend or not. We shall hear no more of any suggestion that the bank, if created, should contemplate suspension as a possibility. It was as a regulator of the currency above everything else that a bank was now called for, and the motive for it was weariness, contempt, and disgust, in regard to the local banks and the currency provided by them.
- ↑ Life of Jacob Barker, 123.
