The rest for the greater part might be left to
their own energy and enterprise. The chief embarrassments which at the
moment exhibit themselves have arisen from overaction, and the most
difficult task which remains to be accomplished is that of correcting
and overcoming its effects. Between the years 1833 and 1838 additions
were made to bank capital and bank issues, in the form of notes designed
for circulation, to an extent enormously great. The question seemed to
be not how the best currency could be provided, but in what manner the
greatest amount of bank paper could be put in circulation. Thus a vast
amount of what was called money--since for the time being it answered
the purposes of money--was thrown upon the country, an overissue which
was attended, as a necessary consequence, by an extravagant increase of
the prices of all articles of property, the spread of a speculative
mania all over the country, and has finally ended in a general
indebtedness on the part of States and individuals, the prostration of
public and private credit, a depreciation in the market value of real
and personal estate, and has left large districts of country almost
entirely without any circulating medium. In view of the fact that in
1830 the whole banknote circulation within the United States amounted
to but $61,323,898, according to the Treasury statements, and that an
addition had been made thereto of the enormous sum of $88,000,000 in
seven years (the circulation on the 1st of January, 1837, being stated
at $149,185,890), aided by the great facilities afforded in obtaining
loans from European capitalists, who were seized with the same
speculative _mania_ which prevailed in the United States, and the large
importations of funds from abroad--the result of stock sales and
loans--no one can be surprised at the apparent but unsubstantial
state of prosperity which everywhere prevailed over the land; and as
little cause of surprise should be felt at the present prostration
of everything and the ruin which has befallen so many of our
fellow-citizens in the sudden withdrawal from circulation of so large an
amount of bank issues since 1837--exceeding, as is believed, the amount
added to the paper currency for a similar period antecedent to 1837--it
ceases to be a matter of astonishment that such extensive shipwreck
should have been made of private fortunes or that difficulties should
exist in meeting their engagements on the part of the debtor St