is this to be construed into corruption or converted into a bribe? In every state in the Union there is a large capital of its citizens invested in stocks of multiplied state banks. Most of these are rivals in business with the Bank of the United States, and they have all boards of directors, and most of them are colleagued with newspapers, all eager for the destruction of the Bank of the United States. An institution doubly obnoxious to the system of safety fund banks in the state of New York; inasmuch as their discounts, at the rate of six per cent. a year, curtail one per cent. of the dividends which otherwise, by the laws of New York, they would be enabled to levy upon the community. It is, therefore, not surprising, that in the city, and even in the state of N. York, that animosity against the Bank of the United States, of almost all the local banks should have been so great as even to spread its influence into the legislature of the state. The same operation is active under feebler excitements in many other states. These are not bribes. But the concert of opposition from state banks, in almost every quarter of the Union organized with harmonious energy, in concert with public journals, perhaps as numerous, and constantly operating upon the public mind unfavorably by means of the press, made it indispensably necessary for those to whom the welfare of the corporation was intrusted, to defend themselves occasionally, and from time to time in the same manner. If, while hundreds and thousands of the conductors of state banks, impelled by private and personal interests, are filling the popular public journals under their influence, by means of discounts and facilities granted or withdrawn, with every change that suspicion can conceive, or imagination can invent, to invoke popular resentment and indignation against the Bank of the United States, to prevent the renewal of their charter, the president and directors of the Bank of the United States, are forbidden all use of the public press, for the defence and vindication of their own institution, they stand indeed in fearful inequality of condition with their adversaries before the tribunal of public opinion. The local banks of N. York, for example, grant, with lavish hand, bank accommodations and facilities to the editor of a daily newspaper, who fills his columns with all the common-places of vituperation against the Bank of the United States. They deny all facility and accommodation to another editor, who admits into his paper essays or communications favorable to that bank. Does the editorial votary of state banks, and seven per cent. interest, slacken his fervor? his discounts at the state banks are curtailed: Does he falter in his zeal? a pressure for money comes upon the state banks, and his notes are called in. Does he dare to admit into his paper a communication favorable to the mammoth bank? he loses all credit with his old bankers. Does he presume to hint, in an editorial article, that, after all, a bank bound to discount at the rate of six per cent. interest, may be of some advantage to borrowers in a community, where the established legal rate of interest is seven? he becomes at once, in the estimation of the local bank directors, insolvent, and blasted in credit, and, if he offers for discount, a note of a hundred dollars, with the best endorser in the city, it is rejected by the silent vote of one or two directors, because the editor's newspaper did formerly oppose, and now ceases to oppose, the re-chartering of the Bank of the United States. And then, if the editor, cramped and crippled in his business by the screw thus put on his press, to save himself and his establishment from ruin, applies to the president and directors of the Bank of the United States for an accommodation loan? No-they too must regard him as insolvent, and blasted in credit-they too must withhold all banking accommodation and facility from him, though recommended by the Chief Magistrate of the city of New York himself, or they will be guilty of the atrocious offence of subsidizing the press. This statement of facts is here hypothetically put-it is not intended to charge the presidents and directors of the New York city banks with any such motives for granting, or for withholding their discounts. The subscriber not only approves, but was gratified, at their refusal to assign their reasons for declining to discount the notes offered by Mr. Webb. Had the question been asked them why they had discounted the notes of the same person before, their answer must have been the same. The acceptance of an offered note, is, by unanimous and tacit assent, without assignment of reasons, and for which the reasons of one director are not necessarily the reasons of another. They are not proper subjects of inquiry, so long as the discount is in violation of no law. And this principle is equally applicable to the president and directors of the Bank of the United States. They are amenable to, authority only for conformity to the law. To the stockholders they are further accountable for the prudent and discreet employment of their funds. But, while the result of that management has been, for a series of years, to yield, to the stockholders half-yearly dividends, of three and a half per cent. upon their investments, while the stock of the bank, is at twenty-five per cent, advance upon its original cost in the market; and whilst the heaviest of all the complaints against the bank is the extensiveness and universality of its credit, the subscriber believes that the stockholders, and the most vigilant guardians of their interest, may wait until an actual loss shall have happened upon any one loan or discount, before they shall be justified in imputing either thriftless improvidence, or sordid corruption, to the president and directors of the bank for having granted it. The constitution of the United States denies to Congress itself the power of pressing any bill of attainder, ex post facto law, or law abridging the freedom of the press. But here is a new fangled offence created ex post facto, under the denomination of subsidizing the press, to operate as a bill of attainder upon the bank, and as a disfranchisement to every editor of a public journal who may happen to be obnoxious to a political party in power. The fact constituting this most extraordinary crime, is the mere existence of a loan, or discount of the proscribed editor at the bank: a transaction entirely warranted by law, but in the consummation of which a committee of one branch of the legislature first assumes the right of scrutinizing, and then of passing sentence of condemnation upon the motives of both parties to the contract. As there is no law constituting the offence, the degree of its malignity has no rule of proportion but that of the temper by which it is prosecuted; it will be aggravated by every stimulant of private pique of clashing interest, or political prejudice, or of morbid suspicion, which can be enlisted in the prosecution. A committee man, being a large stockholder in a state bank, to be deeply benefitted by the extinguishment of the bank of the United States; another, not linked in connection with a newspaper establishment in competition with the editor to be attainted; a profound political economist, wedded to a system of coin, currency, and credit, propitious to one banking interest, and unfavorable to another; a mere partizan hanging upon the skirts of a political candidate, and following the camp to share in the spoils of the victory, might all club their inventive faculties to swell this imaginiary trespass into a felony-and seldom would there lack as an ingredient in the composition, the corrosive sublimate of a malicious temper, with instinctive hatred of all honor and integrity, prone always to infer actual fraud and villainy from the mere possibility of its existence, and even to insinuate corruption, without daring openly to affirm it. These are consequences which must and would follow from the sanction by Congress, or either of its Houses, of the principle that the accounts of editors of newspapers, as a separate class of men, with the bank are to be scrutinized by a committee of Congress, as tests of the political opinions or doctrines for their editorial columns-or indications of the candidate to the presiden. cy, to whose banners they adhere-or defeat the re 1832.] UNITED STATES BANK. chartering of the bank, by deducting from the same naked fact of existing loans, large or small, the dishonorable conclusion, that the motives of the president and directors of the bank, for granting these loans, were to purchase the support of the borrowers, by bribery and corruption. But let it, for argument's sake, be admitted that the accommodation of a loan to the editor of a public newspaper, by the president and directors of the Bank of the United States, is, on their part, an act of corruption of which the Congress of the United States, without doing injustice, and without derogation from the dignity of their duties, can take cognizance, the subscriber believes that it cannot justly have any bearing whatever, upon the question whether the Bank of the United States shall or shall not be re-chartered. Admit that, in a country where the freedom of the press is among the first clements of the liberty of the people, a committee of one House of Congress has a right to constitute ex post facto, a crime under the name of subsidizing the press, of that, which in the eye of the law of the land, is, and always has been innocent-Admit that they have power to search into the hearts of the president and directors of the bank for dishonest motives to lawful actions-Admit that they have a right to interrogate them for reasons which no director of any bank is ever bound to give. great mass of the community of the benefits and advantages secured to them, and enjoyed by them through the instrumentality of this great institution over this whole Union, would proceed from a theory of crimes and punishments unrivalled by the political inquisition of Venice, or the religious inquisition of Spain. A theory by which the crime would be committed by one set of persons, and the punishment inflicted upon another-a theory by which the stockholders would be mulcted in their property, because the directors had been faithless to their trust, and the people bereft of public blessing, because the confidence in the integrity of their agents had been betrayed. At the close of the long commentary of the majority report, upon the transactions between the editors of the New York Courier and Enquirer, it is observed, that, among the documents exhibited to the committee, and The report neither reported to the House, are four other cases of loans at long credit, made by the bank. mentions the names of the individuals, parties to those contracts, nor the correspondence and testimony relating to them, which were laid before the committee. The subscriber, approving the discretion of the majori He will barely take occasion from it ty, in this particular, will not deviate from the example set in the report. The ob to remark, that the names of those individuals, and of their accounts and transactions with the bank, cannot Admit, that after the president and directors have be brought before the public by the committee, without submitted to these insulting interrogatories, and assign-gross injustice. Those transactions, he is bound to beed the reasons by which they were actuated, the com-lieve, were perfectly justifiable in all the parties to the mittee should still feel themselves justified in groping contract; but he was under a full conviction that neither day after day, for substantial evidence, to falsify the he, nor the committee, had the right to inquire into frank and explicit declaration of men without a slur up- them, whether for justification or for censure. But in each of on their fame-That piles of folio volumes, of bank ac- jection of the subscriber is to all inquisition into mo counts, should be rummaged over, nights and days, for tives, for actions unforbidden by law. a variety in the color of ink, in entries made by differ- these four cases-in those of the accounts of every edient clerks, with different inkstands, for errors in the tor of a newspaper, of every member of Congress, and spelling of a name, for interlineations and erasures in a of every person connected with the Executive Governwaste-book or a Tickler, and all to substitute trifles ment-if the fact of the individual account is exhibited light as air of suspicion, in the place of fact, and to im-to the public, it is, upon the plainest principle of justice, pute fraud, forgery and perjury where they cannot be the right of the individual to have alike exhibited to the proved-Admit that the unsullied characters of men, public, all the circumstances connected with the translong known among their fellow-citizens, for lives with-actions which he may deem essential to his justification. out fear and without reproach, may be thus breathed and whispered into disgrace-What has all this to do with the question, whether the Bank of the United States shall receive a new charter or not? If the president and any number of the directors have been guilty of malversation in their offices, the remedy for their of fence is removal from office. They may be further responsible to the stockholders in their persons and property. But what is that justification? Is it justification limited by the boundaries of the law? No: that is not sufficient. The account in bank must be coupled with the conduct and opinions of the individual, to point the finger at him So it was in the case of James Watson and at the bank as for dishonorable conduct and corrupt purposes. Webb and of Mordecai M. Noah. Why was it not so in other cases? Why are the names of other printers, and the amount and the aspect of their debts to the The directors appointed by the President and Senate bank, as principals or as endorsers, withheld? Why are, at all times removable by the President of the are other editors, having large accommodations in the United States alone. The president of the bank is ev- bank, the names of their endorsers, the character of ery year liable to removal, both as president and direct- their settlements, the present state of their engageor, by failure of re-election as a director by the stock-ments, and a contemporaneous exposition of their ediholders, or as president by the directors. No other di- torial friendship, or hostility to the bank, not set forth in rector can be re-elected more than three successive all the developments of the bank debts and editorial years in four. If the board of directors have been guil-speculations of James Watson Webb and Mordecai M. ty of neglect or violation of their duties, the punishment of their delinquency is to appoint another set of directors in their place; not to punish the innocent and injured stockholders by refusal to renew the charter. By the rotation prescribed in the charter itself, not one of the present board of directors can remain in office at the time of the expiration of the charter, nor can the present president of the board ever be president of the bank under the renewed charter, but by the suffrages of the stockholders, according to their respective privileges of voting. If, therefore, any misconduct had been discoverable in the official conduct of the president of the bank, the proper punishment for it would have been his removal from office; and the same may be said of any other of the directors. But for their faults, to punish the stockholders who had no communication or privity with them-for their errors, to deprive the Noah? Why are not the day of an editorial discount and the day of an editorial puff of panegyric, or blast of abuse upon the bank, brought in juxta-position to each other, so that suspicion may yoke them together in the relation of cause and effect, in any other case than theirs? The subscriber believed that there were other accounts of editors and printers with the bank, exhibited to the committee, which, compared with editorial lucubrations in the newspapers, of the same editors at the same time with the discounts, or at the present day, would suggest reflections quite as edifying to the spirit of reform, as the debts and dissertations of James Watson Webb and Mordecai M. Noah. The majority report has buried them in oblivion. There let them remain. The subscriber will not disturb their repose. But he asks of the candor of the community, and of the self re ers. tant relative of his, and one of the most eminent brokers of Philadelphia, had been in the habit, by permission of the president, of taking money out of the First Teller's drawer, leaving in its place certificates of stock; of keeping the money an indefinite number of days, and then re-placing the money, and taking back his certificate of stock, without payment of interest upon the moneys of which he had had the use. The quintessence of the charge was, the use by Mr. Thomas Biddle of the moneys of the bank without interest. And there was another charge, that the president had also been in the habit of making large discounts upon the notes of Thomas Biddle without consulting the directors, between the discount days, and that the notes were entered as of the previous discount days. spect of the House, representing the feelings of the people, that no more legislative investigations may be instituted at the expense of the nation, under color of an examination into the books and proceedings of the bank of the U. States; into the political purity and undeviating consistency of the conductors of the public press. It is with great satisfaction, that the subscriber declares his entire and undoubting conviction, as the result of all the examination which, under the resolution of the House, and the unbounded range of inquiry sanctioned by the majority of the committee, he was able to give the books and proceedings of the bank, that no misconduct whatever, is imputable to the president, or to any of the present directors of the bank. That, in the management of the affairs of this immense institution, now for a series of nearly ten years, occasional er- Mr. Wilson's testimony completely disproved, so far rors of judgment, and possibly of inadvertance, have as his knowledge went, both these charges. He been committed, is doubtless true-in the vast multi- had never known a single instance in which Mr. Thotude of relations of the bank with the property of the mas Biddle, or any other person, had ever been permitwhole community, the board of directors of the Parent ted by the president of the bank to use the moneys of Bank, or of some of its branches, have sometimes mista- the bank without payment of interest. He had never ken the law, and sometimes have suffered by misplaced known a discount of a note of Thomas Biddle by order confidence. A spirit of predetermined hostility, un- of the president of the bank, without consulting the controlled by a liberal sense of justice, prying for the board of directors or the committee duly authorized flaws, and hunting for exceptions, may gratify itself, to discount. Mr. Wilson had been removed in a manand swell with exultation at its own sagacity, in discov- ner as inoffensive to his feelings as possible, from his ering an error or arguing a misconstruction of the pow- office of cashier of the parent bank in 1824, by being In the conduct of the present president and di- first transferred to the branch at New Orleans, from rectors of the Bank of the United States, no intentional which he was also afterwards removed. Previous to wrong, and no important or voluntary error has been his removal from the bank at Philadelphia, the personal committed. He deems this declaration due from him to intercourse between the president of the bank and him those worthy and respectable citizens, in the face of had not been altogether harmonious. He had hinted this House and of this nation, willing as he is to abide to Mr. Reuben M. Whitney, a director then secretly unupon it the deliberate judgment of after times. He friendly to the president, and to Mr. Paul Beck, a dideems it the more imperiously required of him as a sig-rector particularly friendly to himself, that he thought nal vindication of the honor and integrity of injured and the president had too much influence over the board of persecuted men. It has been impossible for him to ob- directors, and had spoken with disapprobation of the serve, without deep concern, the spirit and temper fact, that Mr. Thomas Biddle had occasionally received with which this investigation has been prosecuted par- discounts upon transferred stocks, with checks, which, ticularly with regard to the president of the bank. As at the end of an indefinite number of days, were taken one example of which, he would call the attention of up and the cash returned, with regular payment of inthe House to the testimony of Reuben M. Whitney-terest, as upon discounted notes. The checks being to the manner in which it was produced, and to the entered in the books under the head of bills receivable. catastrophe in which it terminated. Several cases of this kind had occurred in the months of May and June 1824. Mr. Wilson's testimony was very clear and explicit to the integrity of the president of the bank, and it was totally contradictory to the statements which the chairman had framed into charges from the private information which he had received, and the name of the informer of which he had declined giving to the committee. But Mr. Wilson had named Mr. Paul Beck and Mr. Reuben M. Whitney, two of the directors of the bank in 1824, and to whom he had incidently communicated his slight discontents at the period immediately before his removal. On the 2d of April, the chairman of the committee asked of them, authority to issue a subpoena to summon the attendance before them of Thomas Wilson, heretofore, in the year 1824, a cashier of the bank, to testify as a witness. The subscriber inquired what it was expected Mr. Wilson would prove, which question the chairman declined to answer. The subscriber objected therefore to the issuing of the subpoena, and the motion for it was for that day withdrawn. The next day it was renewed, with a statement in writing by the chairman of several allegations, as the subscriber conceived, amounting to charges against the president of the bank, of embezzlement of the monies of the institution. The subscriber inquired from whom these charges had been received, which the chairman declined to state. The subscriber moved that a copy of the charges should be furnished to the president of the bank. But the paper was withdrawn by the chairman, and a resolution was substituted in its place, which was entered upon the journal of the committee. The objection of the subscriber to this course of proceeding was, at his request, entered upon the journal, and at the request of the chairman an entry was also made of the grounds upon which he deemed his own course in this respect justifiable. The objection of the subseriber was, not that the chairman had thought proper to listen privately to secret informers, but that he required the action of the committee for a call of testimony deeply affecting the moral character of the president of the bank, and yet withheld from the committee the name of his informant. The subpoena to Mr. Thomas Wilson was nevertheless issued. The charges against the president of the bank were, that Thomas Biddle, a dis Mr. Beck and Mr. Whitney were summoned to appear and testify. The character and respectability of Mr. Beck are so universally known at Philadelphia, that all remark upon them would be superfluous. He had been a director of the bank in the years, 1824, 25, and '26, and again in the years 1828, '29 and '30, and of course not only at the time alluded to by Mr. Wilson, but for five of the years which have elasped since then, and till within less than two years past. Mr. Beck remembered the communications made to him by Mr. Wilson, shortly before his removal, and had thought them to proceed from irritation. He had seen no cause to doubt the correctness of the official conduct of the president, and has retained his perfect confidence in it unimpaired to the present day. The testimony of Mr. Whitney was of a different character. This person had been a director of the bank in the years, 1822. '23 and '24, and a very active member of the board. He was a native American, but from the year 1808 to 1816 had been a resident in Montreal in Canada-during the war, by permission of the British government, on his taking an oath to obey the laws of the country, which he did not consider as an oath of allegiance-but he had not asked or received the permission to remain in Canada from his own government. About a year after the expiration of his services as a director of the bank, he failed in busiOf his present standing in the community, no evidence was taken by the committee. ness. 329 clined communicating to the committee. He inquired of Mr. Whitney whether he had previous communication on the subject with any member of the committee? What had been his motive for giving the testimony? Whether it had been voluntary or solicited? To these questions he answered that he had made previous communications to the chairman at his apartment, in presence of another member of the committee; that he had no particular, but general motives for giving the testimony; that he did not recollect whether it had been voluntary or asked of him; but upon being pressed by a further question, he answered, that Judge Clayton had been recommended to him by a letter from Mr. Benton. This disclosure was then confirmed by the chairman. The subscriber requested that his objections to the admission of this evidence, while anonymous, should be entered on the journals of the committee, and an explanatory entry was also made at the request of the chairman. The story that Mr. Whitney told on his first examition was, that some time in 1824, Mr. Wilson and Mr. Andrews, then cashiers of the bank, had mentioned to him certain transactions in the bank in which T. and J. G. Biddle were concerned, which they were not willing should exist without some member of the board being informed of them. Upon his inquiring what they were, they replied that T. & J. G. Biddle had been in the habit of coming to the bank and getting money, and leaving certificates of stock, which represented it in the first Teller's drawer, without paying interest, and without being entered on the books. That they had also stated that the Messrs. Biddle had had notes discounted for them by the president which were entered on the books of the preceding discount-day: that upon Mr. Whitney's asking them what sums there were of the kind in existence at that time, they went with him to the first Teller's drawer, and found one sum of 45,000 dollars, dated 25th May, and one for 24,000, dated 26th May: that they then went to the discount clerk's desk, and found one note at 15 days, dated 13th May, for 20,000 dollar, of T. Biddle, and one note of Charles Biddle, dated 21st May, at sixteen days, for $38,319: that the two former sums represented cash, and the two latter were notes which the two cashiers stated to him had But Mr. Whitney testified that no entries had been been discounted by order of the president. Of all this, made of the certificates of stock in the teller's drawer, Mr. Whitney declared, a memorandum at the time had of the two sums 45,000 and 24,000 dollars minuted on been taken by him. Such a memorandum he produc- his memorandum, on the books, until after he had ored, and left with the committee on a small slip of paper, dered the entries to be made, while the books of the worn out and torn, and it is among the papers reported bank proved that entries of both those sums had been reby the committee; and as it formed the main stay of Mr.gularly made on those respective days, the 25th and 26th Whitney's first testimony, a copy of the whole of it is here subjoined. "May 25, 45,000. 26, 24,000. May 13, 15 days, $20,000 collateral. 21, C. Biddle, 58,319, 16 days 5—8 June.” Of the two first notes, Mr. Whitney declared, in answer to a leading question from the chairman, that no entry had been made upon the books: that he took his note of them from a memorandum in the teller's drawer, and that on making the discovery, he directed the officers of the bank, one or both cashiers, to enter this money upon the books: that it was done—that he did not see it done, but subsequently saw on the books, the entry of "bills receivable," which he knew was the entry made by his order. He further stated that immediately after making this discovery,and giving this order, he had gone into the president's room, where he found him alone: that he told him what he had discovered and done, and requested that no such transaction should be repeated while he was a director of the institution. That the president did not deny the facts as he had stated them-that he colored up very much, and promised that no such thing should happen again. Mr. Whitney appealed with great confidence to his memorandum, and to the books of the bank corresponding with it, to confirm his story; but there was nothing in the memorandum to show that it had not been taken from the books of the bank. There was internal evidence in the memorandum that it could not have been taken before the 26th of May; and there was evidence on the books of the bank that it was probably taken from them on the 27th of May-that was the only day on which one of the books of the bank corresponded with the memoradum of Mr. Whitney. of May: Mr. Whitney's own testimony showed that he had seen the books after the entries were made, and there was nothing except his own declaration, to show that he had not taken his memorandurn from them. Mr. Andrews and Mr. Wilson, the two cashiers from whom Mr. Whitney alleged that he had received the first information of this embezzlement of the moneys of the bank, denied in the most explicit and unqualified terms, that any such transaction had ever taken placedenied not only that they had ever given to Mr. Whitney such information as he had affirmed to have received from them, but the existence, at any time, of any facts which would have justified them in given such information. Mr. Burtis, the first teller, and Mr. Patterson, the discount clerk, at whose drawers Mr. Whitney's narrative represented him as having made his discoveries, and given his orders for making the entries, with equally earnest asseveration, denied that any such transaction had ever taken place, so far as they were concerned. The president of the bank, confronted with Whitney, declared, upon oath, that there was not one word of truth in his statement of his interview with him. And Mr. Whitney was left with his ragged memorandum, and his oath, falsified by the concurring oaths of the five individuals, who with certainty of knowledge could con Nor was this all. Mr. Whitney's statement was confined by the purport of his memorandum, and the context of the books of the bank, to a date of time of no wider range than the 26th or 27th of May, 1824. The president of the bank, on a subsequent day, proved, by the correspondence of the bank, that from the 22d to the last day of that month, he was not at Philadelphia, but on a visit to the City of Washington, on the business of the bank. For these discrepancies from the testimony of Mr. Whitney, as upon his examination he termed them, he did not attempt to account. He withdrew, however, the statement that he had ordered the entries This testimony appeared to be in all respects so extra-tradict him. ordinary, and so deeply to affect the moral character of the president of the bank, in which the subscriber had been long accustomed to repose the most unbounded confidence, that he deemed proper to trace its introduction, so far as possible, to its origin. As the question of the chairman of the committee which drew forth this testimony indicated that he had previously been made acquainted with it in detail, and as he had, on first stating his expectation to prove these charges, declined naming the witness by whom he expected to prove them, the subscriber resorted, by interrogation of the witness, to ascertain that which the chairman had de. VOL. IX. 4.2 of the two sums of 45,000 and 24,000 dollars, to be made upon the books, and placed the affirmance in an alternative position, to meet the evidence as it appeared in fact upon the books. He now said he had ordered the entries to be made, or had found them already made, and confirmed them. But he never attempted to show to the committee whence or how he, as a single director, had derived the authority of ordering the keepers of the respective books to make any entry upon the books whatever; an authority which all the keepers of the books denied to belong to a director. The question was put to Mr. Whitney, whether, upon his making his discoveries. he had considered himself as having fully discharged his own duty, as a director, by a more private expostulation with the president, without making known the transaction to the board of directors at all: to which he answered, that he had not considered the subject in that point of view. Mr. Whitney, to sustain his character, produced evidence that he had been very extensively engaged in business; had paid large sums for duties on imported articles to the government of the states; that, while a director of the bank, he had been a very active and industrious member of the board, and that he had been employed by the board in confidential trusts, which he had faithfully executed. As a last resort to sustain his charge of embezzlement against the president of the bank, although he admitted he had never mentioned it to the board of directors, he insisted that he had, soon after it happened, spoke freely of it to others, and particularly to Mr. Wilson Hunt, who, he requested, might be called, and who accordingly was called as a witness before the committee. Had there remained a fragment of doubt' upon the mind of the subscriber with regard to the character of the testimony of Mr. Whitney before the examination of Mr. Hunt, it would have vanished upon hearing what he testified. It was, that Mr. Whitney, some years since, at the time when he was a director of the bank, had confidentially shown him a memorandum of some loans on stocks, which he said had been made to Mr. Thomas Biddle, by the president, without the knowledge of the directors. Mr. Hunt thought that Mr. Whitney had further averred that these loans had not been entered on the books of the bank, but he did not recollect that he had told him that he had ordered them to be entered on the books, and he was very sure he never had told him that the loans were without payment of interest. Mr. Hunt had been impressed with the idea, derived from Mr. Whitney's communications to him, that he was not friendly to the president of the bank; and he said he had thought them serious enough. But Mr. Hunt manifested astonishment at the very question, whether Whitney had told him that the loans were made without payment of interest. He not only denied that fact, but with a very natural asseveration, that if it had been so stated to him, it was impossible he should have forgotten it. The subscriber, in charity to the infirmities of human nature, would wittingly believe that the testimony of Mr, Whitney, upon his first examination, was the result of self-delusions, produced by long cherished and pampered suspicions of trivial error, till imagination, supplying the place of memory, had swoln them into imputations of embezzlement and fraud. Mr. Whitney had been stimulated to bear testimony against the bank from abroad. The more aggravated the charges which he could bring to bear on public opinion against the president of the bank, the fairer would be the prospect of success in defeating the renewal of the charter, and the more acceptable to the spirit of party would be the service he might render by the testimony he should give. The defaced and tattered memorandum, taken in years long past from the books, would give a sort of mysterious pre-emption right of credibility to any colourable detail of circumstantial narrative to be connected with it. The instinct of calumny is inventive of details, pre cisely because details make their way most easily to the credit of the hearer, and it has long been remarked by keen observers of human action, that he who accustoms himself to make truant of his memory is often-times the first to credit his own lie. Whether it was so with Mr. Whitney, the subscriber cannot undertake to say with certainty; but certain it is that an affirmation most material, and most confident. ly made, in the first examination of Mr. Whitney, that the notes which he had discovered in the Teller's drawer had not been entered on the books when he discovered them, and that they were so entered by his direction, was retracted by himself after it had been blasted by the production of the entries upon the face of the books themselves. Yet the retraction itself was frank and candid. It was by assuming an alternative, which while it abandoned all pretence of sustaining the fact, was yet unwilling to abandon the offensive imputation. When the impossibility of his pretended interview with the President, of rebuke on the part of Whitney, and of tacit confession and blushing promise of future amendment on the part of Mr. Biddle, was demonstrated by the President's absence from Philadelphia at the time, Mr. Whitney was not prepared with any subsequent invention of details to supply its place. He admitted that there was a discrepancy between this demonstration and his previous asseverance, but he neither attempted to reconcile them, nor to fortify his own statement by explanation or commutation of its terms. His dishonoured memorandum found no endorsement for the honour of the drawer. Other charges of partiality by the President of the Bank, in behalf of his distant relatives, Thomas Biddle, & Co. had also been scattered abroad upon the no better foundation than the fact that Thomas Bibble & Co. are, and have for years, been among the brokers of the first eminence and most extensive business at Philadelphia, or in the Union. That their transactions of business have been and are every year to the amount of many millions. That their deposites in bank have been to similar amount, and that they have occasionally been responsible to the Bank for more than a million of dollars at once. Brokers of this description are, to all essential purposes, bankers themselves, as a bank in the plenitude of its power and operations, is but a broker upon a larger scale. Among the transactions of Messrs. Thomas Biddle and Co. with the bank, there was a deposite made by them to a considerable amount, upon which, by agreement, an allowance was once for a short time made to them for interest. It appeared upon explanation, that the money thus deposited was in the possession of Thomas Biddle & Co. as agents of a certain foreign government, and that the pressure on the money market was very great. That the use of the money for the time during which the interest was allowed, would have been of more value to them than that interest, and the bank having urgent occasion for the use of the money, the interest upon it for a few weeks was allowed, as a consideration for its being left in bank for employment there, instead of being withdrawn for the use of the depositors. It was substantially a loan for a time, the principal profit of which was on the side of the bank, and in which the allowance of interest was not equivalent to the profit which Thomas Biddle & Co. would have realized from the same money by withdrawing it. That in the cases of moneys paid out to them from the teller's drawer, upon equivalent deposites of stocks, transferred, it was done for transactions in which the Biddles were purchasing bills for the bank, acting not for themselves, but as agents for the bank. In such cases the cash was wanted to pay for the bills purchased. The brokers not having the cash on hand, received it from the bank itself, leaving United States' stocks of equal value in its place, for a few days, until the brokers agents for the bank restored the cash, took back the certificates of stock, and paid interest for the cash |