THE SUSPENSION OF SPECIE PAYMENTS. * WE are debating whether the Banks shall or not designate a day on which they will resume specie payments. In favor of a resumption, we have been reminded of our moral duty to resume. The duty is conceded, but gentlemen seem to think it may be dispensed with by conflicting duties of superior urgency. We are accordingly told that a return to specie payments,before exchanges fall to a par with specie, will cause such a contraction of Bank loans, as will depress every branch of national prosperity. To my understanding, we are not debating the true issue. We are impelled to a resumption of specie payments by legal obligations. Who has conferred on us the right to dispense with our legal obligations? We are answerable to the law when we refuse specie, but we are not answerable, legally or morally, for the contraction of Bank discounts, so long as the contractions are necessary to enable us to fulfil our legal obligations. If the laws which require us to pay specie inflict an injury on the people, let the people ask a legal remedy; and let the Legislatures, and let Congress, find a remedy if they can. Let not Banks presume to stand between the people and the law-makers, and to decide that they will not obey such laws, as they deem injurious to the people. The people ask no such protection at our hands. They receive our illicit services, I admit; but they receive, and complain while they receive. Like the unhappy females who nightly throng our streets, and whom also expediency may seek to justify, we are reviled and abused by even those whom we serve. But why do we debate the morality and expediency of a * Spoken at a Convention of Bank Representatives from all parts of the Union, held at New-York in 1837. resumption of specie payments, when the law is threatening us with its penalties? The State of New-York has given its Banks a respite till May, and conferred even that boon at the expense of a total inhibition of Bank dividends. The owners of thirty-five millions of the most active capital of the State, are thus compelled to bear, not only all the evils of the times in common with other men, but the additional evil of receiving no interest on their capital—an interest to which many of them look for the support of their families. As well, then, may the convict, with the halter around his neck, debate the expediency of capital punishments, as we debate the expediency of a restoration of specie payments. He may debate, but he will be executed. Assuming, then, that both our legal and moral duties to resume specie payments cannot be denied—and they have not been denied in any of our discussions-the true question which we ought to consider is, our physical ability to resume specie payments. This only proper topic of discussion, has been wholly overlooked; though, incidentally, the ability has been, by most of us, admitted. Many of the States here represented have rather vied with each other in announcing early periods at which they can resume, were they to disregard its consequences on the community. Pennsylvania professes an ability to resume in April; NewYork in March; and some other States at even an earlier period. But while I insist that our physical ability to resume, is alone the question on which we should deliberate, in order to designate the period at which we will resume, I dissent from the arguments which have been adduced to prove the disastrous effects of a resumption. We are referred to the existing rate of exchanges, and we are told that till ex changes fall we cannot resume, and continue to commerce its necessary facilities. But are not gentlemen aware that instead of Banks being thus controlled by exchanges, the exchanges are to a great degree controlled by Banks, through the means of a contraction of loans. This must be a practical truth, or Banks would be continually suspending and resuming. Money when scarce cannot be obtained by many who would otherwise remit. Local purposes and speculations also, in such times, divert money from being remitted: and hence exchange falls from a diminution of purchasers. Exportable produce falls also, from the scarcity of money; and hence presents a profitable substitute for bills of exchange, and still further depresses them. Banks, therefore, are always able to defend themselves against an upward tendency of exchanges; and hence the influence which Banks will now be required to exercise over the rate of exchanges, is but the ordinary exercise of a long accustomed power over the money-market. But in relation to our foreign debt, on whose magnitude the present and prospective high price of exchange is predicated by the gentlemen opposed to us, I dissent from the statistics which have been produced, to show the existence of such a debt. The calculations which we have heard, relate to only the commercial debt that is due to Europe; and in relation to that debt the calculations may be correct; but we throw wholly out of view the millions of State Stocks which are daily being created by the several States, and which directly or indirectly, are sent to Europe. We throw out of view, also, the millions loaned in Europe to our private corporations-the millions that are sent here from Europe for investments, and the millions that are brought here by emigrants, and the millions of the existing commercial debt that are due from suspended and insolvent debtors. That these items-and I can name others-more than counter-balance the commercial balance, of which we have heard so much, is demonstrable from the otherwise anomalous fact that, since the suspension of specie payments, the imports of specie have far exceeded the exports. To swell the amount of our foreign indebtedness, the gentleman who represents the Bank of the United States has informed us of a loan of seven millions of dollars due from that Bank, I presume, to England; and which loan becomes payable within the year. Admit the fact-but will the loan be paid? I venture to say it will not be paid in reality, though it may be in form. It will be paid by a new loan in some shape or other. Loans of this character must be continually falling due, but the superior interest which we can pay, and which induced the creation by Europe of the original loans, must operate to the continuance of such loans. They will always exist, and hence their falling due is only a prelude to their renewal. But if the gentleman shall say that the loan will be paid without the creation of a new and equivalent debt, the fault will be his own. The payment must be unnecessary. I have no doubt that the Bank which the gentleman represents, can alone, if it please, bor. row, and keep borrowed indefinitely, in Europe, a much larger sum than all the commercial balance which has been arrayed here to make us continue in our illegal position of suspended Banks. Another reason assigned for the expediency of our not designating a day of resumption, is that the resolves of the Convention can be but advisory, the Convention possessing no power to coerce the Banks to conform to our resolutions. This is a reason in favor of our designating a day of resumption. Were Banks compelled to obey our designation, we might well tremble at the responsibility which we were assuming, but to the extent that our resolves are not obligatory, our mistakes will not necessarily be fatal; and to the extent that we shall err in our recommendations, the Banks will be justified in disregarding our recommendations. Besides, that we cannot coerce the Banks to conform to our resolutions may have been some reason for our not assembling in Convention, but it can be no reason for withholding our advice now we are assembled. Let us then perform our duty manfully, and if we shall succeed in designating a period when Banks ought to resume payments, let those bear the responsibility who shall think proper to disregard our designation. We are told also that the designation of a day by this Convention will excite expectations which if not realized will be disastrous. I admit the position; but should we now adjourn without designating a day, we shall even now disappoint the expectations of the country. Let us therefore not create a certain disappointment, from the fear that our actions may produce a disappointment hereafter. In relation to the resolutions which have been offered by the gentleman of Massachusetts, and which decide against fixing a time for the resumption of specie payments, they appear to me a mere screen to cover the failure of the present Convention. They announce nothing but the most common-place good intentions to perform the most indefinite actions; and all through the instrumentality of another Convention to assemble in this city next April. That Convention is to be more extensive than the present. But what reasons exist for such an expectation? Our failure will give ominous presage of the inutility of Conventions, and men will be restrained from attending another. The gentleman who represents the Bank of the United 8 |