the press, and that the phrase meant nothing. If State banks could punish those who favored the United States Bank, why should not the United States Bank help them? Should editors be allowed no bank accommodation? If the Bank discounted a note for an administration editor, it was said to subsidize him. If for an opposition editor, it was said to bribe him.
2.—Favoritism to Thomas Biddle, second cousin of the president of the Bank, and its broker. N. Biddle admitted that the Bank had allowed a usage adopted by other banks of allowing cash in the drawer to be loaned out to particular persons and replaced by memorandum checks which were passed as cash for a few days. He said that the practice had been discontinued. Reuben M. Whitney made a very circumstantial charge that T. Biddle had been allowed to do this and that he had paid no interest for the funds of the Bank of which he thus got the use. The loans to him were very large. October 15, 1830, he had $1,131,672 at five per cent. N. Biddle proved that he was in Washington at a time when Whitney's statement implied that he was in Philadelphia. Adams said that Whitney lied. It was certainly true, and was admitted, that T. Biddle had had enormous confidential transactions with the Bank, but Whitney was placed in respect to all the important part of his evidence in the position of a convicted calumniator. We shall hear of him again below. In 1837 he published an address to the American people, in which he reiterated all his charges against Biddle.[1]
3.—Exporting specie, and drawing specie from the South and West. From 1820 to 1832, $22.5 millions were drawn from the South and West to New York. This was charged to the Bank. Silver was, however, regularly imported from Mexico to New Orleans, whence it passed up the river to the North and East, and was exported from there to China. The paper issues in the Mississippi Valley prevented it from staying there. So far as the branch drafts after 1827 helped to produce this result, the Bank had some share in it, but, as there were then very few banks of issue in the Valley,[2] a greater amount of specie was probably retained at that time than ever before. The Bank was also charged with exporting specie as a result of its exchange operations. It sold drafts on London for use in China, payable six months after sight. They were sold for the note of the buyer at one year, so that the goods could be imported and sold to meet the draft. In this way they produced an inflation of credit, but the charge of causing an export of specie was only an expression of ignorant popular prejudice.
4.—The improper increase of branches. No doubt there were too many. Cheves in his time thought some of them disadvantageous to the Bank, but it had been importuned to establish them; there was complaint if a branch was lacking where the government or influential individuals wanted one, and there would have been a great outcry if a proposition had been made to abolish one. How then could their excessive number be made a charge against the Bank?
