be shipped to Europe subject to the order of the banking house for reimbursement. Many of these cargoes, instead of being sent to Europe, were sent to the United States, and for various reasons the returns upon them were delayed or were lost. The amount of credits which these houses had extended in the United States was estimated, toward the end of 1836, at £20 millions; but they had been reduced during the winter to the sum above named, or, as other authorities stated, to about, £12 millions. At the same time the best authorities estimated the amount of American stocks held in England at about £20 millions sterling. There was, therefore, in March quite a well-defined commercial crisis in London. The policy of the Bank of England in sustaining the three W's was much disputed, but the "Edinburgh Review" said that if the bank had refused to take their paper, "bills to the amount of from £8 millions to £12 millions would have instantly ceased to be negotiable, and it is all but certain that the shock which such an event would have given to credit would have produced an extent of bankruptcy and ruin to be paralleled only by what followed the breaking up of the Mississippi scheme in France."
In New York, in January, several of the banks refused to receive [of] deposit checks on other banks. In the same month the Board of Trade of New York memorialized Congress in regard to the deranged state of the currency and exchanges, and asked their interposition to remedy it. They urged that another national bank should be chartered, particularly for the reason that it could regulate the local banks. "In short, such an establishment has existed and is familiar to the habits of the country, and your memorialists desire nothing better than to return to that system under which the commerce and currency of our country so long prospered." It was very generally agreed on all sides that the currency was excessive and in great disorder.
After the 1st of January, the price of cotton fell four or five cents a pound in England, and during many months of the year, 1837, the price ranged four cents lower than in 1836. This was a fall of 30 per cent. or 40 per cent., and its effect upon the persons who had taken up cotton lands on credit, expecting a maintenance of the old price, was disastrous. It was not strange, therefore, that the first failures occurred at New Orleans. They happened on the 4th of March, so that Gen. Jackson left to his successor the task of reaping all the harvest which he had sown by his experiments of the last eight years. The first failure was that of Hermann, Briggs & Co., cotton factors, who had made advances to the cotton planters which the crop would not repay. Their correspondents, J. L. and S. Josephs & Co., of New York, failed as soon as the news reached New York. Six months later, however, their estate was said to show surplus assets for more than half a million of dollars.[1]
It will therefore be seen that this revulsion came upon the commercial
- ↑ N.Y. "Journal of Commerce," October 9, 1837.
