to New York in March; but the "American" returned to the charge declaring that the issue was whether the United States Bank of Pennsylvania would allow the banks of New York to resume without its co-operation. To attribute such a position to that Bank was "a libel upon the common sense, upon the patriotism, upon the character, and the sagacity, of the eminent individual at the head of that institution."
In January, the New York delegates to the bank convention published a report of its proceedings. They set aside, in the first place, all the "considerations of presumed expediency connected with the general situation of the country," which had been urged in the convention, but which had nothing to do with the power of the banks to sustain specie payment. In this they referred to all the old familiar methods of arguing on these questions, which Biddle had used so much, and which had been echoed in the convention by his adherents. Against the doctrine of protracted suspension they denied that it would "be advantageous to the community at large; believing on the contrary, as we do, that its general and permanent interest would be sacrificed to temporary ease and particular classes, should the suspension be continued any longer than absolute necessity requires." "When we see such extensive general, and, we may say, intolerable evils flowing from a general suspension of specie payments by the banks, it is monstrous to suppose that, if they were able to resume and sustain such payments, they should have any discretionary right to decide or even to discuss the question whether a more or less protracted suspension is consistent with their own views of 'the condition and circumstances of the country.'" "It appeared to us that if, after the principal acknowledged cause of the suspension, and which presented the greatest obstacles to resumption had actually ceased to operate, we were permitted to allege conjectures and contingencies as a proper ground for protracting the suspension, there was no time at which some plausible reason of a similar character might not be adduced, and the resumption be indefinitely postponed." Thus they brushed away the whole sophistry by which the prolonged. suspension was defended. In January, the banks of Albany resumed; also the Farmers and Mechanics' Bank of Hartford, the New Haven Bank, and the Camden Bank of South Carolina. In February, the banks of Maine held a convention, at which they expressed a hope that the adjourned convention would propose an early date.
In March the Committee on Banks made a report to the Senate of Pennsylvania in which the whole Biddle doctrine of resumption was fully expounder. The most effective point was the assertion that the banks could not resume without enforcing a collection of $15 millions or $20 millions from the public.
February 28th, a committee of the New York banks on resumption reported that resumption would be possible on or before May 10th, when the one year for which suspension had been sanctioned by the Legislature would expire. By way of preparation, they proposed that a system of settlement of balances between the banks should be introduced. The associated banks
