the Bank was $500,452 80—it is now reported to me by the Cashier, to be $447,000. The $500,452 80 were drawing 8 per cent, interest, the present amount 7 per cent. By the sale of the bonds issued in 1848 and 1849, there has been a saving to the Bank on the interest account of about $6,870. This has been effected without the slightest shock to the credit of the Bank, or the least encroachment upon private rights. A registry of all the bonds issued under the authority of the different acts passed in 1847, has been carefully kept in this Department, which shews the number, date, when and where redeemable, the rate of interest and when payable, and every material fact descriptive of the bonds and the coupons thereto attached.
Measures were taken, at an early day, to engage the services of a reliable House in London, to whom remittances could be made to meet the interest, as it falls due, on the foreign debt, which is now reduced to £ 15,000—the entire balance of the sterling bonds held by Messrs. Reid, Irving & Co., amounting to £ 15,130 6, with interest and commissions, having been paid early in 1848. The act of the 22d Dec. 1843 having provided a fund for the discharge of the Reid, Irving & Co. debt only, and not a permanent sinking fund, the inquiry naturally arose, at the close of the last year, as to what application should be made of a balance, which it was then ascertained, would be in the Treasury, at the close of the present year. Believing it to be my duty not to permit a large sum of the public money to remain in the Treasury, idle and unproductive, and being sustained in this view by the Financial Committee appointed at the close of the fiscal year 1848, I adopted the suggestion contained in their report herewith transmitted, and redeemed of the bonds issued under the act of 1847, for the completion of the Western & Atlantic Rail Road, the sum of $ 75,000.
As a part of the inducement for the selection of those in preference to other securities, I might mention that a most advantageous contract had been made by the Rail Road contractors with the Coalbrookdale Company, of Great Britain, for the delivery in Savannah of the iron necessary to the completion of the railway. The iron, to the value of $ 75,000, under the arrangement, was pledged to the State, making it her property, at a price below its market value at that time, as an additional security. In any event the interest of the State was abundantly protected, and by it the completion of the Road will be accomplished at an earlier day than could be anticipated without this assistance. The step is also deemed defensible on the ground, that bonds at 7 per cent, interest, amounting to more than six hundred thousand dollars, for the relief of the Central Bank and the redemption of the hypothecated bonds already referred to,
