five dollars had been forbidden by nearly all the states, and as specie was at ten per cent premium, all small change disappeared, and the towns were flooded with notes and tickets for small sums, issued by municipalities, corporations, and individuals.
The most interesting fact connected with this commercial credit is that New York and Philadelphia took opposite policies in regard to it, and thus offered, in their differing experience, an experimental test of those policies. The New York legislature passed an act allowing suspension for one year. The New York policy then was to contract liabilities and prepare for resumption at the date fixed. The Philadelphia policy, in which Mr. Biddle was the leader, was to wait without active exertions for things to get better. In his letter of May 13 to Adams, Biddle said that the Bank could have gone on without trouble, but that consideration for the rest forced him to go with them. What especially moved him was that, if the Pennsylvania banks had not suspended, Pennsylvanians would have had to do business with a better currency than the New Yorkers, which would have been unfair. Mr. Biddle knew perfectly well that the exchanges would arrange all that. He was an adept at writing plausible letters. The truth, which was not known until four years later, was that the capital of the Bank had never been withdrawn from the stock loans, that the chief officers of the Bank were plundering it, and that suspension was not more welcome to any institution in the country than to the great Bank. The jealousy between New York and Philadelphia was very great at this time. Mr. Biddle's personal vanity seems to have been greatly flattered when, in March, he was called on by the New Yorkers to help them. He was still the leading financier of the country. The business men could not spare him, even if the government had thrown him off. There seems also to be some evidence that he hoped that a
