ir bills ceased to circulate. We are now at that sum; but with
treble the population, and of course a longer tether. Our depreciation
is, as yet, but at about two for one. Owing to the support its credit
receives from the small reservoirs of specie in the vaults of the banks,
it is impossible to say at what point their notes will stop. Nothing
is necessary to effect it but a general alarm; and that may take
place whenever the public shall begin to reflect on, and perceive, the
impossibility that the banks should repay this sum. At present, caution
is inspired no farther than to keep prudent men from selling property
on long payments. Let us suppose the panic to arise at three hundred
millions, a point to which every session of the legislatures hastens
us by long strides. Nobody dreams that they would have three hundred
millions of specie to satisfy the holders of their notes. Were they even
to stop now, no one supposes they have two hundred millions in cash, or
even the sixty-six and two-thirds millions, to which amount alone the
law obliges them to repay. One hundred and thirty-three and one-third
millions of loss, then, is thrown on the public by law; and as to the
sixty-six and two-thirds, which they are legally bound to pay, and ought
to have in their vaults, every one knows there is no such amount of cash
in the United States, and what would be the course with what they really
have there? Their notes are refused. Cash is called for. The inhabitants
of the banking towns will get what is in the vaults, until a few banks
declare their insolvency; when, the general crush becoming evident, the
others will withdraw even the cash they have, declare their bankruptcy
at once, and leave an empty house and empty coffers for the holders of
their notes. In this scramble of creditors, the country gets nothing,
the towns but little. What are they to do? Bring suits? A million of
creditors bring a million of suits against John Nokes and Robert Styles,
wheresoever to be found? All nonsense. The loss is total. And a sum is
thus swindled from our citizens, of seven times the amount of the real
debt, and four times that of the factitious one of the United States,
at the close of the war. All this they will justly charge on their
legislatures; but this will be poor satisfaction for the two or three
hundred millions they will have lost. It is time, then, for the public
functionaries to look to this. Perhaps it may not be too late. Perhaps,