s the overgrown capitalist, have the extended credit of
twelve months in his duties, the amount of which on one cargo furnishes
nearly a sufficient capital for completing another voyage, before his
bonds are payable?" The Mercantile Society recommended that credits on
duties be reduced to three and six months on merchandise imported from
all quarters of the globe.--Reports of Committees, Second Session,
Sixteenth Congress, 1820-21, Vol. I, Document No. 34.

[59] "The Old Merchants of New York," 1:31-33. Barrett was a great
admirer of Astor. He inscribed Vol. iii, published in 1864, to Astor's
memory.

[60] The movement to abolish imprisonment for debt was a protracted one
lasting more than a quarter of a century, and was acrimoniously opposed
by the propertied classes, as a whole. By 1836, however, many State
legislatures had been induced to repeal or modify the provisions of the
various debtors' imprisonment acts. In response to a recommendation by
President Andrew Jackson that the practise be abolished in the District
of Columbia, a House Select Committee reported on January 17, 1832, that
"the system originated in cupidity. It is a confirmation of power in the
few against the many; the Patrician against the Plebeian." On May 31,
1836, the House Committee for the District of Columbia, in reporting on
the debtors' imprisonment acts, said: "They are disgraceful evidences of
the ingenious subtlety by which they were woven into the legal system we
adopted from England, and were obviously intended to increase and
confirm the power of a wealthy aristocracy by rendering poverty a crime,
and subjecting the liberty of the poor to the capricious will of the
rich."--Reports of Committees, Second Session, Twenty-second Congress,
1832-33, Report No. 5, and Reports of Committees, First Session,
Twenty-fourth Congress, 1836, Report No. 732, ii:2.

CHAPTER VI

GIRARD--THE RICHEST OF THE SHIPPERS

Girard was born at Bordeaux, France, on May 21, 1750, and was the eldest
of five children of Captain Pierre Girard, a mariner. When eight years
old he became blind in one eye, a loss and deformity which subjected his
sensibilities to severe trials and which had the effect of rendering him
morose and sour. It was his lament in later life that while his brothers
had been sent to college, he was the ugly duckling of the family and
came in for his father's neglect and a shrewish step-mother's
waspishness. At about fourteen years of