been profitable rather to bring wool and sell it at cost, if there had been no duty.[1] He always used the importation or exportation of specie as an indicator of prosperity or the reverse. He was now compelled to change his argument, which he did by saying that the exportation of specie proved that there was no reciprocity in trade. The Americans worked for specie only to send it to England.[2] The Baltimore Bank would take only notes. which were depositable in New York and Philadelphia.[3] There was a great stringency in money and fall in prices. The auctions were said to be crowded with goods from England. With exchange at 111 and discount rates high, United States Bank stock advanced, being used probably as a remittance.[4] In October of 1830 specie was flowing into the United States in abundance. It was being exported from England both to the United States and to the Continent.[5] In January, 1830, the influx of specie had become an incumbrance. The banks did not have room in which to keep it.[6] Niles says that this is the good result which he had promised, yet he states that the Baltimore banks would not pay the cost of bringing silver from Philadelphia to get it. Capital was plentiful. He puts the specie in the banks of the United States at thirty million dollars, besides ten million dollars in circulation.[7] In April he says that great sums have been sent to the United States for investment, through the Bank of the United States, on account of apprehensions in Europe.[8] In October we find him complaining once more that money is very scarce among all who depend on bank accommodation, and that six or seven millions of dollars have lately departed for England. Prices are falling under forced sales.[9] In 1831 the Bank of England exported specie and curtailed its circulation.[10] In February, 1832, there are complaints of a great stringency of money and exportations of specie with bankruptcies because banking assistance is refused. There is a great contraction of the currency.[11] In the same month McDuffie, in a report to the House, said that there was "not nearly enough money afloat to meet the general demand for it."
In the decade from 1820 to 1830, the banks of the Atlantic coast settled down to a system of circulation banking. Out of the troubles of the second decade, some rules and maxims for this kind of banking had been developed, and some men had been trained by experience to its methods. In fact, the system of banking which Hamilton had introduced might be regarded as now operating according to his theory of it, and the Bank of the United States was now acting as a regulator, according to the theory. Gouge, who had studied this system in its operation more thoroughly and with more intelligence than anybody else, maintained that it was a system of alternate expansions and contractions. The years of expansion and "good times" were 1821, 1824, 1827, 1830-31. The years of crisis and "hard times" were 1822, 1825, 1828-9, 1832.
