loaned to the State.[1] In comparison with the failure and waste attendant upon the financial enterprises of this character which had been attempted in other States, this case stands out as a subject of especial interest.
McCulloch, in defending the second Bank of the State, had occasion to state, in 1857, what he thought had been the causes of the success of this bank. He attributed it to "the peculiar features of its charter and the prudence of its managers." "The State was powerless in the Board of Control and in the branch Boards. * * * The success of the State Bank is unquestionably owing to the facts that the State Board had full control of the business of the branches; that the branches, although independent in their profits, were mutually responsible for the circulation and deposits of each other, and that the men who managed them had both character and money to lose by maladministration of their affairs."[2] In the case of a bank, at least, it is emphatically true that "what is best administered is best."
On the same day on which the above-mentioned revision of the general banking law was passed, a new Bank of the State was chartered for twenty years, with very nearly the same features as the old one,[3] over a veto. There was great difficulty in raising the capital of the new bank, and it seems very doubtful if it could have been put in operation; but the plan was adopted of selling the new charter to the old bank, which thus went on as before. Hugh McCulloch was made president. He had been cashier of the Fort Wayne branch. There was a great deal of complaint by the anti-bank men that the Legislature had been outwitted, and the Constitution violated, by a trick, and there were even charges of corruption. McCulloch answered that the purchasers of the charter were innocent of any such proceedings. He predicted the panic of 1857, in April of that year.[4] Reviewing his administration of the bank, in his book, he says that he was obliged to coerce the directors of the branches, and to prevent them from borrowing of the bank; and he adds, in regard to the numerous bank failures in the United States, that no bank ever failed there, "the capital of which was a cash reality and whose managers were not thieves, or the borrowers of its money." This statement does not say as much as it might at first seem to say, for we have seen that the almost universal diseases of the banks had been that they had not a cash capital, and that the directors did borrow of them or plunder them. The wonder is that a great many more such did not go into bankruptcy. McCulloch's administration of this bank has become justly famous. In view of what we have seen about the Banks of the States, any man deserved high honor who could pilot such an institution successfully through. The plan of this bank and that of the Bank of the State of Ohio were evidently attempts to co-ordinate and organize the petty banks into a unity where they could be regulated and restrained. It is plain that no such system could work unless there was firm discipline, unflinching integrity, and fearlessness at the head.
