mere freight for the time being, while the business from which the money was withdrawn gasped for breath in its struggle with a fearfully stringent money market.
The trouble was aggravated by one of Jackson's own financial measures. For a while the enormous land sales struck Jackson's mind as something uncommonly fine. In his message of December, 1835, he spoke of them as “among the evidences of the increasing prosperity of the country,” attesting “the rapidity with which agriculture, the first and most important occupation of man, advances, and contributes to the wealth and prosperity of our extended territory.” Presently, however, he became aware that the land sales did not mean settlement and agriculture, but speculation. He learned also that the land sold was paid for generally in notes issued, in great part at least, by banks of very uncertain solvency, and granting loans with great readiness. Banks in the old states would lend their small notes in large sums to speculators, who would carry them “out West” to buy land with them; these notes would thus get into circulation far away from their places of issue and redemption, — far enough to find their way back but slowly. The land sales were, indeed, in a great measure, “a conversion of public land into inconvertible paper.” Jackson resolved that this must be stopped.
His confidential friend, Benton, introduced a resolution in the Senate, that nothing but specie
