Kitabı oku: «Thirty Years' View (Vol. I of 2)», sayfa 84

6. At a time, and under circumstances, to involve the political rights and pecuniary interests of the people of the United States in serious injury and peculiar danger.– This head of his argument, Mr. B. said, would require a development and detail which he had not deemed necessary at this time, considering what had been said by him at the last session, and what would now be said by others, to give the reasons which he had so briefly touched. But at this point he approached new ground; he entered a new field; he saw an extended horizon of argument and fact expand before him, and it became necessary for him to expand with his subject. The condemnation of the President is indissolubly connected with the cause of the bank! The first form of the resolution exhibited the connection; the second form did also; every speech did the same; for every speech in condemnation of the President was in justification of the bank; every speech in justification of the President was in condemnation of the bank; and thus the two objects were identical and reciprocal. The attack of one was a defence of the other; the defence of one was the attack of the other. And thus it continued for the long protracted period of nearly one hundred days – from December 26th, 1833, to March 28th, 1834 – when, for reasons not explained to the Senate, upon a private consultation among the friends of the resolution, the mover of it came forward to the Secretary's table, and voluntarily made the alterations which cut the connection between the bank and the resolution! but it stood upon the record, by striking out every thing relative to the dismissal of Mr. Duane, the appointment of Mr. Taney, and the removal of the deposits. But the alteration was made in the record only. The connection still subsisted in fact, now lives in memory, and shall live in history. Yes, sir, said Mr. B., addressing himself to the President of the Senate; yes, sir, the condemnation of the President was in indissolubly connected with the cause of the bank, with the removal of the deposits, the renewal of the charter, the restoration of the deposits, the vindication of Mr. Duane, the rejection of Mr. Taney, the fate of elections, the overthrow of Jackson's administration, the fall of prices, the distress meetings, the distress memorials, the distress committees, the distress speeches; and all the long list of hapless measures which astonished, terrified, afflicted, and deeply injured the country during the long and agonized protraction of the famous panic session. All these things are connected, said Mr. B.; and it became his duty to place a part of the proof which established the connection before the Senate and the people.

Mr. B. then took up the appendix to the report made by the Senate's Committee of Finance on the bank, commonly called Mr. Tyler's report, and read extracts from instructions sent to two-and-twenty tranches of the bank, contemporaneously with the progress of the debate on the criminating resolutions; the object and effect of which, and their connection with the debate in the Senate, would be quickly seen. Premising that the bank had dispatched orders to the same branches, in the month of August, and had curtailed $4,066,000, and again, in the month of October, to curtail $5,825,000, and to increase the rates of their exchange, and had expressly stated in a circular, on the 17th of that month, that this reduction would place the branches in a position of entire security, Mr. B. invoked attention to the shower of orders, and their dates, which he was about to read. He read passages from page 77 to 82, inclusive. They were all extracts of letters from the president of the bank in person, to the presidents of the branches; for Mr. B. said it must be remembered, as one of the peculiar features of the bank attack upon the country last winter, that the whole business of conducting this curtailment, and raising exchanges, and doing whatever it pleased with the commerce, currency, and business of the country, was withdrawn from the board of directors, and confided to one of those convenient committees of which the president is ex officio member and creator; and which, in this case, was expressly absolved from reporting to the board of directors! The letters, then, are all from Nicholas Biddle, president, and not from Samuel Jaudon, cashier, and are addressed direct to the presidents of the branch banks.

When Mr. B. had finished reading these extracts, he turned to the report made by the senator from Virginia, who sat on his right [Mr. Tyler], where all that was said about these new measures of hostility, and the propriety of the bank's conduct in this third curtailment, and in its increase upon rates of exchange, was compressed into twenty lines, and the wisdom or necessity of them were left to be pronounced upon by the judgment of the Senate. Mr. B. would read those twenty lines of that report:

"The whole amount of reduction ordered by the above proceedings (curtailment ordered on 8th and 17th of October) was $5,825,906. The same table, No. 4, exhibits the fact, that on the 23d of January a further reduction was ordered to the amount of $3,320,000. This was communicated to the offices in letters from the president, stating 'that the present situation of the bank, and the new measures of hostility which are understood to be in contemplation, make it expedient to place the institution beyond the reach of all danger; for this purpose, I am directed to instruct your office to conduct its business on the following footing' (appendix, No. 9, copies of letters). The offices of Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, St. Louis, Nashville, and Natchez, were further directed to confine themselves to ninety days' bills on Baltimore, and the cities north of it, of which they were allowed to purchase any amount their means would justify: and to bills on New Orleans, which they were to take only in payment of pre-existing debts to the bank and its offices; while the office at New Orleans was directed to abstain from drawing on the Western offices, and to make its purchases mainly on the North Atlantic cities. The committee has thus given a full, and somewhat elaborate detail of the various measures resorted to by the bank, from the 13th of August, 1833; of their wisdom and necessity the Senate will best be able to pronounce a correct judgment."

This, Mr. B. said, was the meagre and stinted manner in which the report treated a transaction which he would show to be the most cold-blooded, calculating, and diabolical, which the annals of any country on this side of Asia could exhibit.

[Mr. Tyler here said there were two pages on this subject to be found at another part of the report, and opened the report at the place for Mr. B.]

Mr. B. said the two pages contained but few allusions to this subject, and nothing to add to or vary what was contained in the twenty lines he had read. He looked upon it as a great omission in the report; the more so as the committee had been expressly commanded to report upon the curtailments and the conduct of the bank in the business of internal exchange. He had hoped to have had searching inquiries and detailed statements of facts on these vital points. He looked to the senator from Virginia [Mr. Tyler] for these inquiries and statements. He wished him to show, by the manner in which he would drag to light, and expose to view, the vast crimes of the bank, that the Old Dominion was still the mother of the Gracchi; that the Old lady was not yet forty-five; that she could breed sons! Sons to emulate the fame of the Scipios. But he was disappointed. The report was dumb, silent, speechless, upon the operations of the bank during its terrible campaign of panic and pressure upon the American people. And now he would pay one instalment of the speech which had been promised some time ago on the subject of this report; for there was part of that speech which was strictly applicable and appropriate to the head he was now discussing.

Mr. B. then addressed himself to the senator from Virginia, who sat on his right [Mr. Tyler], and requested him to supply an omission in his report, and to inform what were those new measures of hostility alluded to in the two-and-twenty letters of instruction of the bank, and repeated in the report, and which were made the pretext for this third curtailment, and these new and extraordinary restrictions and impositions upon the purchase of bills of exchange.

[Mr. Tyler answered that it was the expected prohibition upon the receivability of the branch bank drafts in payment of the federal revenue.]

Mr. B. resumed: The senator is right. These drafts are mentioned in one of the circular letters, and but one of them, as the new measure understood to be in contemplation, and which understanding had been made the pretext for scourging the country. He (Mr. B.) was incapable of a theatrical artifice – a stage trick – in a grave debate. He had no question but that the senator could answer his question, and he knew that he had answered it truly; but he wanted his testimony, his evidence, against the bank; he wanted proof to tie the bank down to this answer, to this pretext, to this thin disguise for her conduct in scourging the country. The answer is now given; the proof is adduced; and the apprehended prohibition of the receivability of the branch drafts stands both as the pretext and the sole pretext for the pressure commenced in January, the doubling the rates of exchange, breaking up exchanges between the five Western branch banks, and concentrating the collection of bills of exchange upon four great commercial cities.

Mr. B. then took six positions, which he enumerated, and undertook to demonstrate to be true. They were:

1. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that there were any new measures in contemplation, or action, to destroy the bank.

2. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that the President harbored hostile and revengeful designs against the existence of the bank.

3. That it was untrue, in point of fact, that there was any necessity for this third curtailment, which was ordered the last of January.

4. That there was no excuse, justification, or apology for the conduct of the bank in relation to domestic exchange, in doubling its rates, breaking it up between the five Western branches turning the collection of bills upon the principal commercial cities, and forbidding the branch at New Orleans to purchase bills on any part of the West.

5. That this curtailment and these exchange regulations in January were political and revolutionary, and connected themselves with the resolution in the Senate for the condemnation of President Jackson.

6. That the distress of the country was occasioned by the Bank of the United States and the Senate of the United States, and not by the removal of the deposits.

Having stated his positions, Mr. B. proceeded to demonstrate them.

1. As to the new measures to destroy the bank, Mr. B. said there were no such measures. The one indicated, that of stopping the receipt of the branch bank drafts in payments to the United States, existed nowhere but in the two-and-twenty letters of instruction of the president of the bank. There is not even an allegation that the measure existed; the language is "in contemplation" – "understood to be in contemplation," and upon this flimsy pretext of an understanding of something in contemplation, and which something never took place, a set of ruthless orders are sent out to every quarter of the Union to make a pressure for money, and to embarrass the domestic exchanges of the Union. Three days would have brought an answer from Washington to Philadelphia – from the Treasury to the bank; and let it be known that there was no intention to stop the receipt of these drafts at that time. But it would seem that the bank did not recognize the legitimacy of Mr. Taney's appointment! and therefore would not condescend to correspond with him as Secretary of the Treasury! But time gave the answer, even if the bank would not inquire at the Treasury. Day after day, week after week, month after month passed off, and these redoubtable new measures never made their appearance. Why not then stop the curtailment, and restore the exchanges to their former footing? February, March, April, May, June, five months, one hundred and fifty days, all passed away; the new measures never came; and yet the pressure upon the country was kept up; the two-and-twenty orders were continued in force. What can be thought of an institution which, being armed by law with power over the moneyed system of the whole country, should proceed to exercise that power to distress that country for money upon an understanding that something was in contemplation; and never inquire if its understanding was correct, nor cease its operations, when each successive day, for one hundred and fifty days, proved to it that no such thing was in contemplation? At last, on the 27th of June, when the pressure is to be relaxed, it is done upon another ground; not upon the ground that the new measures had never taken effect, but because Congress was about to rise without having done any thing for the bank. Here is a clear confession that the allegation of new measures was a mere pretext; and that the motive was to operate upon Congress, and force a restoration of the deposits, and renewal of the charter.

Mr. B. said he knew all about these drafts. The President always condemned their legality, and was for stopping the receipt of them. Mr. Taney, when Attorney General, condemned them in 1831. Mr. B. had applied to Mr. McLane, in 1832, to stop them; but he came to no decision. He applied to Mr. Duane, by letter, as soon as he came into the Treasury; but got no answer. He applied to Mr. Taney as soon as he arrived at Washington in the fall of 1833; and Mr. Taney decided that he would not stop them until the moneyed concerns of the country had recovered their tranquillity and prosperity, lest the bank should make it the pretext of new attempts to distress the country; and thus the very thing which Mr. Taney refused to do, lest it should be made a pretext for oppression, was falsely converted into a pretext to do what he was determined they should have no pretext for doing.

But Mr. B. took higher ground still; it was this: that, even if the receipt for the drafts had been stopped in January or February, there would have been no necessity on that account for curtailing debts and embarrassing exchanges. This ground he sustained by showing – 1st. That the bank had at that time two millions of dollars in Europe, lying idle, as a fund to draw bills of exchange upon; and the mere sale of bills on this sum would have met every demand which the rejection of the drafts could have thrown upon it. 2. That it sent the money it raised by this curtailment to Europe, to the amount of three and a half millions; and thereby showed that it was not collected to meet any demand at home. 3d. That the bank had at that time (January, 1834) the sum of $4,230,509 of public money in hand, and therefore had United States money enough in possession to balance any injury from rejection of drafts. 4th. That the bank had notes enough on hand to supply the place of all the drafts, even if they were all driven in. 5th. That it had stopped the receipt of these branch drafts itself at the branches, except each for its own in November, 1833, and was compelled to resume their receipt by the energetic and just conduct of Mr. Taney, in giving transfer drafts to be used against the branches which would not honour the notes and drafts of the other branches. Here Mr. B. turned upon Mr. Tyler's report, and severely arraigned it for alleging that the bank always honored its paper at every point, and furnishing a supply of negative testimony to prove that assertion, when there was a large mass of positive testimony, the disinterested evidence of numerous respectable persons, to prove the contrary, and which the committee had not noticed.

Finally, M. B. had recourse to Mr. Biddle's own testimony to annihilate his (Mr. Biddle's) affected alarm for the destruction of the bank, and the injury to the country from the repulse of these famous branch drafts from revenue payments. It was in a letter of Mr. Biddle to Mr. Woodbury in the fall of 1834, when the receipt of these drafts was actually stopped, and in the order which was issued to the branches to continue to issue them as usual. Mr. B. read a passage from this letter to show that the receipt of these drafts was always a mere Treasury arrangement, in which the bank felt no interest; that the refusal to receive them was an object at all times of perfect indifference to the bank, and would not have been even noticed by it, if Mr. Woodbury had not sent him a copy of his circular.

Mr. B. invoked the attention of the Senate upon the fatal contradictions which this letter of November, and these instructions of January, 1834, exhibit. In January, the mere understanding of a design in contemplation to exclude these drafts from revenue payments, is a danger of such alarming magnitude, an invasion of the rights of the bank in such a flagrant manner, a proof of such vindictive determination to prostrate, sacrifice, and ruin the institution, that the entire continent must be laid under contribution to raise money to enable the institution to stand the shock! November of the same year when the order for the rejection actually comes, then the same measure is declared to be one of the utmost indifference to the bank; in which it never felt any interest; which the Treasury adopted for its own convenience; which was always under the exclusive control of the Treasury; about which the bank had never expressed a wish; of which it would have taken no notice if the Secretary had not sent them a circular; and the expediency of which it was not intended to question in the remotest degree! Having pointed out these fatal contradictions, Mr. B. said it was a case in which the emphatic ejaculation might well be repeated: Oh! that mine enemy would write a book!

To put the seal of the bank's contempt on the order prohibiting the receipt of these drafts, to show its disregard of law, and its ability to sustain its drafts upon its own resources, and without the advantage of government receivability, Mr. B. read the order which the president of the bank addressed to all the branches on the receipt of the circular which gave him information of the rejection of these drafts. It was in these words: "This will make no alteration whatever in your practice, with regard to issuing or paying these drafts, which you will continue as heretofore." What a pity, said Mr. B., that the president of the bank could not have thought of issuing such an order as this in January, instead of sending forth the mandate for curtailing debts, embarrassing exchange, levying three millions and a half, alarming the country with the cry of danger, and exhibiting President Jackson as a vindictive tyrant, intent upon the ruin of the bank!

2. The hostility of the President to the bank. This assertion, said Mr. B., so incontinently reiterated by the president of the bank, is taken up and repeated by our Finance Committee, to whose report he was now paying an instalment of those respects which he had promised them. This assertion, so far as the bank and the committee are concerned in making it is an assertion without evidence, and, so far as the facts are concerned, is an assertion against evidence. If there is any evidence of the bank or the committee to support this assertion, in the forty pages of the report, or the three hundred pages of the appendix, the four members of the Finance Committee can produce it when they come to reply. That there was evidence to contradict it, he was now ready to show. This evidence consisted in four or five public and prominent facts, which he would now mention, and in other circumstances, which he would show hereafter. The first was the fact which he mentioned when this report was first read on the 18th of December last, namely, that President Jackson had nominated Mr. Biddle at the head of the government directors, and thereby indicated him for the presidency of the bank, for three successive years after this hostility was supposed to have commenced. The second was, that the President had never ordered a scire facias to issue against the bank to vacate its charter, which he has the right, under the twenty-third section of the charter, to do, whenever he believed the charter to be violated. The third, that during many years, he has never required his Secretaries of the Treasury to stop the governmental receipt of the branch bank drafts, although his own mind upon their illegality had been made up for several years past. The fourth, that after all the clamor – all the invocations upon heaven and earth against the tyranny of removing the deposits – those deposits have never happened to be quite entirely removed! An average of near four millions of dollars of public money has remained in the hands of the bank for each month, from the 1st of October, 1833, to the 1st of January, 1835, inclusively! embracing the entire period from the time the order was to take effect against depositing in the Bank of the United States down to the commencement of the present year! So far are the deposits from being quite entirely removed, as the public are led to believe, that, at the distance of fifteen months from the time the order for the removal began to take effect, there remained in the hands of the bank the large sum of three millions eight hundred and seventy-eight thousand nine hundred and fifty-one dollars and ninety-seven cents, according to her own showing in her monthly statements. That President Jackson is, and always has been, opposed to the existence of the bank, is a fact as true as it is honorable to him; that he is hostile to it, in the vindictive and revengeful sense of the phrase, is an assertion, Mr. B. would take the liberty to repeat, without evidence, so far as he could see into the proofs of the committee, and against evidence, to the full extent of all the testimony within his view. Far from indulging in revengeful resentment against the bank, he has been patient, indulgent, and forebearing towards it, to a degree hardly compatible with his duty to his country, and with his constitutional supervision over the faithful execution of the laws; to a degree which has drawn upon him, as a deduction from his own conduct, an argument in favor of the legality of this very branch bank currency, on the part of this very committee, as may be seen in their report. Again, the very circumstance on which this charge of hostility rests in the two-and-twenty letters of Mr. Biddle, proves it to be untrue: for the stoppage of the drafts, understood to be in contemplation, was not in contemplation, and did not take place until the pecuniary concerns of the country were tranquil and prosperous; and when it did thus take place, the president of the bank declared it to have been always the exclusive right of the government to do it, in which the bank had no interest, and for which it cared nothing. No, said Mr. B., the President has opposed the recharter of the bank; he has not attacked its present charter; he has opposed its future, not its present existence; and those who characterize this opposition to a future charter as attacking the bank, and destroying the bank, must admit that they advocate the hereditary right of the bank to a new charter after the old one is out; and that they deny to a public man the right of opposing that hereditary claim.

3. That there was no necessity for this third curtailment ordered in January. Mr. B. said, to have a full conception of the truth of this position, it was proper to recollect that the bank made its first curtailment in August, when the appointment of an agent to arrange with the deposit banks announced the fact that the Bank of the United States was soon to cease to be the depository of public moneys. The reduction under that first curtailment was $4,066,000. The second was in October, and under that order for curtailment the reduction was $5,825,000. The whole reduction, then, consequent upon the expected and actual removal of deposits, was $9,891,000. At the same time the whole amount of deposits on the first day of October, the day for the removal, or rather for the cessation to deposit in the United States Bank to take effect, was $9,868,435; and on the first day of February, 1834, when the third curtailment was ordered, there were still $3,066,561 of these deposits on hand, and have remained on hand to near that amount ever since; so that the bank in the two first curtailments, accomplished between August and January, had actually curtailed to the whole amount, and to the exact amount, upon precise calculation, of the amount of deposits on hand on the first of October; and still had, on the first of January, a fraction over three millions of the deposits in its possession. This simple statement of sums and dates shows that there was no necessity for ordering a further reduction of $3,320,000 in January, as the bank had already curtailed to the whole amount of the deposits, and $22,500 over. Nor did the bank put the third curtailment upon that ground, but upon the new measures in contemplation; thus leaving her advocates every where still to attribute the pressure created by the third curtailment to the old cause of the removal of the deposits. This simple statement of facts is sufficient to show that this third curtailment was unnecessary. What confirms that view, is that the bank remitted to Europe, as fast as it was collected, the whole amount of the curtailment, and $105,000 over; there to lie idle until she could raise the foreign exchange to eight per cent. above par; which she had sunk to five per cent. below par, and thus make two sets of profits out of one operation in distressing and pressing the country.

4. No excuse for doubling the rates of exchange, breaking up the exchange business in the West, forbidding the branch at New Orleans to purchase a single bill on the West, and concentrating the collection of exchange on the four great commercial cities. For this, Mr. B. said, no apology, no excuse, no justification, was offered by the bank. The act stood unjustified and unjustifiable. The bank itself has shrunk from the attempt to justify it; our committee, in that report of which the bank proclaims itself to be proud, gives no opinion in its brief notice of a few lines upon this transaction; but leaves it to the Senate to pronounce upon its wisdom and necessity! The committee, Mr. B. said, had failed in their duty to their country by the manner in which they had veiled this affair of the exchanges in a few lines; and then blinked the question of its enormity, by referring it to the judgment of the Senate. He made the same remark upon the contemporaneous measure of the third curtailment; and called on the author of the report [Mr. Tyler] to defend his report, and to defend the conduct of the bank now, if he could; and requested him to receive all this part of his speech as a further instalment paid of what was due to that report on the bank.

5. That the curtailment and exchange regulations of January were political and revolutionary, and connect themselves with the contemporaneous proceedings of the Senate for the condemnation of the President. That this curtailment, and these regulations were wanton and wicked, was a proposition, Mr. B. said, which resulted as a logical conclusion from what had been already shown, namely, that they were causeless and unnecessary, and done upon pretexts which have been demonstrated to be false. That they were political and revolutionary, and connected with the proceedings in the Senate for the condemnation of the President, he would now prove. In the exhibition of this proof, the first thing to be looked to is the chronology of the events – the time at which the bank made this third curtailment, and sent forth these exchange regulations – and the time at which the Senate carried on the proceeding against the President. Viewed under this aspect, the two movements are not only connected, but identical and inseparable. The time for the condemnation of the President covers the period from the 25th of December, 1833, to the 28th of March, 1834; the bank movement is included in the same period; the orders for the pressure were issued from the 21st of January to the 1st of February, and were to accomplish their effect in the month of March, and by the first of April; except in one place, where, for a reason which will be shown at a proper time, the accomplishment of the effect was protracted till the 10th day of April. These, Mr. B. said, were the dates of issuing the orders and accomplishing their effect; the date of the adoption of the resolution in the bank for this movement is not given in the report, but must have been, in the nature of things, anterior to the issue of the orders; it must have been some days before the issue of the orders; and was, in all probability, a few days after the commencement of the movement in the Senate against the President. The next point of connection, Mr. B. said, was in the subject matter; and here it was necessary to recur to the original form, and to the second form, of the resolution for the condemnation of the President. In the first, or primordial form, the resolution was expressly connected with the cause of the bank. It was, for dismissing Mr. Duane because he would not remove the deposits, and appointing Mr. Taney because he would remove them. In the second form of the resolution – that form which naturalists would call its aurelia, or chrysalis state – the phraseology of the connection was varied, but still the connection was retained and expressed. The names of Mr. Duane and Mr. Taney were dropped; and the removal of the deposits upon his own responsibility, was the alleged offence of the President. In its third and ultimate transformation, all allusion to the bank was dropped, and the vague term "revenue" was substituted; but it was a substitution of phrase only, without any alteration of sense or meaning. The resolution is the same under all its phases. It is still the bank, and Mr. Taney, and Mr. Duane, and the removal of the deposits, which are the things to be understood, though no longer prudent to express. All these substantial objects are veiled, and substituted by the empty phrase "revenue;" which might signify the force bill in South Carolina, and the bank question in Philadelphia! The vagueness of the expression left every gentleman to fight upon his own hook, and to hang his vote upon any mental reservation which could be found in his own mind! and Mr. B. would go before the intelligence of any rational man with the declaration that the connection between the condemnation of the President and the cause of the bank was doubly proved; first by the words of the resolution, and next by the omission of those words. The next point of connection, Mr. B. said, was detected in the times, varied to suit each State, at which the pressure under the curtailment was to reach its maximum; and the manner in which the restrictions upon the sale and purchase of bills of exchange was made to fall exclusively and heavily upon the principal commercial cities, at the moment when most deeply engaged in the purchase and shipment of produce. Thus, in New-York, where the great charter elections were to take place during the first week in April, the curtailment was to reach its maximum pressure on the first day of that month. In Virginia, where the elections are continued throughout the whole month of April, the pressure was not to reach its climax until the tenth day of that month. In Connecticut, where the elections occurred about the first of April, the pressure was to have its last turn of the screw in the month of March. And in these three instances, the only ones in which the elections were depending, the political bearing of the pressure was clear and undeniable. The sympathy in the Senate in the results of those political calculations, was displayed in the exultation which broke out on receiving the news of the elections in Virginia, New-York, and Connecticut – an exultation which broke out into the most extravagant rejoicings over the supposed downfall of the administration. The careful calculation to make the pressure and the exchange regulations fall upon the commercial cities at the moment to injure commerce most, was also visible in the times fixed for each. Thus, in all the western cities, Cincinnati, Louisville, Lexington, Nashville, Pittsburg, Saint Louis, the pressure was to reach its maximum by the first day of March; the shipments of western produce to New Orleans being mostly over by that time; but in New Orleans the pressure was to be continued till the first of April, because the shipping season is protracted there till that month, and thus the produce which left the upper States under the depression of the pressure, was to meet the same pressure upon its arrival in New Orleans; and thus enable the friends of the bank to read their ruined prices of western produce on the floor of this Senate. In Baltimore, the first of March was fixed, which would cover the active business season there. So much, said Mr. B., for the pressure by curtailment; now for the pressure by bills of exchange, and he would take the case of New Orleans first. All the branches in the West, and every where else in the Union, were authorized to purchase bills of exchange at short dates, not exceeding ninety days, on that emporium of the West; so as to increase the demand for money there; at the same time the branch in New Orleans was forbid to purchase a single bill in any part of the valley of the Mississippi. This prohibition was for two purposes; first, to break up exchange; and next, to make money scarce in New Orleans; as, in default of bills of exchange, silver would be shipped, and the shipping of silver would make a pressure upon all the local banks. To help out this operation, Mr. B. said, it must be well and continually remembered that the Bank of the United States itself abducted about one million and a quarter of hard dollars from New Orleans during the period of the pressure there; thus proving that all her affected necessity for curtailment was a false and wicked pretext for the cover of her own political and revolutionary views.