USA > Pennsylvania > The Register of Pennsylvania : devoted to the preservation of facts and documents and every other kind of useful information respecting the state of Pennsylvania, Vol. IX > Part 94
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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 ex- planatory entry was also made at the request of the chairman.
Mr. Whitney appealed with great confidence to his memorandum, and to the books of the bank correspond- ing 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 evi- dence 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.
But Mr. Whitney testified that no entries had been made of the certificates of stock in the teller's drawer, of the two sums 45,000 and 24,000 dollars minuted on his memorandum, on the books, until after he had or- dered the entries to be made; while the books of the bank proved that entries of both those sums had been re- gularly made on those respective days, the 25th and 26th 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 memoranduin 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 place -- denied not only that they had ever given to Mr. Whit- ney such information as be had affirmed to have received from them, but the existence, at any time, of any facts which would have justified them in given such informa- tion.
Mr. Burtis, the first teller, and Mr. Patterson, the discount clerk, at whose drawers Mr. Whitney's narra- tive 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 Whit- ney, 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- tradiet him.
Nor was this all. Mr. Whitney's statement was con- fined by the purport of his memorandum, and the con- text 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 testi- mony of Mr. Whitney, as upon bis examination he term- ed them, he did not attempt to account. He withdrew, I however, the statement that he had ordered the entries
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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 direc- tor, 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 evi- dence that he hadbeen very extensively engaged in busi- ness; 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 hy the board in confidential trusts, which he had faithfully executed. As a last resort to sustain his charge of em- bezzlement 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 happen- ed, 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 com- mittee.
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 serions 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 willingly believe that the testimony- of Mr, Whitney, upon his first examination, was the result of self-delusions, produced by long cherished and pam- pered suspicions of trivial error, till imagination, sup- plying the place of memory, had swoln them into impu- tations 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 presi- dent 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 ser- vice 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 mysteri- ous 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 impu- tation. When the impossibility of his pretended inter- view 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 Phila- delphia 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 be- tween this demonstration and his previous asseverance, but he neither attempted to reconcile them, nor to for- tify 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 bet- ter 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 Philadel- phia, or in the Union. That their transactions of busi- ness 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 ex- planation, that the money thus deposited was in the possession of Thomas Biddle & Co. as agents of a cer- tain 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 considera- tion for its being left in bank for employment there, in- stead of being withdrawn for the use of the depositors. It was substantially a loan for a time, the principal pro- fit of which was on the side of the bank, and in which the allowance of interest was not equivalent to the pro- fit which Thomas Biddle & Co. would have realized from the same money by withdrawing it.
That in the cases of moneys paid ont 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 bro- kers agents for the bank restored the cash, took back the certificates of stock, and paid interest for the cash
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they had received, for every day during which it had should itself be trusted with great reserve. A man been withdrawn.
The complicated character of the pecuniary opera- tions between the House of Thomas Biddle & Co. as brokers, and the bank, must also be remembered in considering the very large amount of their notes dis- counted at the bank. They might appear on the books of the bank indebted to it, for the amount of a million, when their real debt might not amount to a thousand dollars-the money for which they appeared indebted being only the sums requisite to pay for the bills pur- chased for the bank itself.
In reviewing the whole investigation by the commit- tee of the transaction between the Bank of the United States and the brokers, there is one consideration which most forcibly struck. the mind of the subscriber, and which he thinks pre-eminently worthy of the con- sideration of Congress, and of the nation. The charge of favoritism to certain brokers, of connivance with them to speculate and prey upon public interest, for purpo- ses of usury and extortion, formed a very prominent item in the original resolutions of the chairman of the committee upon which this investigation was instituted. It was one of those charges which, in its essential na- ture imported, not simple inadvertance and indiscre- tion, error of judgment or mismanagement in the pre- sident and directors of the bank, but the sordid pecu- lations of a swindler. It was impossible that those charges should be true, if the President of the United States Bank, was a man of common honesty.
There was no sparing of commentary upon the scan- ty coincidence of facts which the proposer of the reso- lution was willing to consider as giving sufficient colour to the charge to entitle it to the honour of an inquiry. . That there had been, and still were, large dealings be- tween the brokers and the bank was sufficiently noto- rious. That the bank and the brokers had competitors, rivals, and enemies, whose rancor was sharpened by all the stimulants of avarice and ambition, was not less apparent. These passions never fail to have watchful observers in their train. Whispers it now appears, had been in circulation even from the year 1824, ripening for a term of seven years into rumours of combined and concerted frauds, and embezzlement of the funds of the bank to the private purposes of the president of the bank; and the principal brokers of Philadelphia. What was their foundation? Extensive dealings between the bank and the brokers-of course very large discounts to the brokers. Interest to the amount of a few hun- dred dollars once or twice allowed for the use of money by the bank to the brokers. Cash taken out of the bank by the brokers for a few days, upon deposit of stock left in its place. Enormous loans to the brokers, sometimes even at a rate of interest less than 6 per cent. a year. Superadded to all which the name of the pre- sident of the bank was Biddle. The name of the sup- posed accomplice broker was Biddle, and they were descended from one great grandfather. To the suspi- cions of awakened jealousy here were abundant ele- ments for the most nauseous compound of fraud and corruption.
Secret communications are accordingly made to the proposer of the resolution for inquiry, and with a pre- disposition of hostility to the bank, a plausible denunci- ation of guilt and dishonour on the part of the president of the bank, assumes the formidable aspect of a public accusation, and invokes the sanction of a legislative in- vestigation. Hfad the reflection once occurred, that to all these great operations, between the brokers and the bank, the government itself was a party though un- seen, the mystery would have been explained, without needing a resort to the injurious suspicion that a man honored annually by a series of re clectiuns to a station of high trust and confidence, was reducing himself to the level of a common counterfeiter of coins. The subscriber believes that suspicion, though a necessary auxiliary to the faithful discharge of a public trust,
conscious himself of integrity of purpose, should not readily adinit into his mind the belief that others are reckless and unprincipled. Above all, does he believe that a man of honest and candid mind, who has been in- duced by false representations to admit and to counte- nance imputations upon the honour of another, owes him, when .disabused by the evidence of unquestiona- ble testimony, the signal reparation of a candid acknow- ledgment of error.
He never, for a single instant, believed that those dis- honourable imputations upon the president of the hank were founded in truth; but when he found them em- bodied in the positive declarations of a witness upon oath, and fortified by a bold exhibition of a contempo- rancous memorandum, and a confident appeal to the books of the bank, he scarcely dared to indulge the expectation that this desperate lunge against a citizen of unsullied honour could have met so immediate and so total a discomfiture.
To be Continued.
From the Philadelphia Gazette. PROCEEDINGS OF COUNCILS. .
Thursday, May 3, 1832.
SELECT COUNCIL .- Mr. WORRELL presented a petition praying that Locust street from Broad street to Schuylkill Eighth street be paved, which was referred to the Paving Committee.
Mr. PETTIT presented the annexed petition which was referred to the same committee.
To the Select and Common Councils of the City of Phila- delphia.
The memorial of the subscribers respectfully repre- sents, That the present regulation of the wharves on Schuylkill, is well calculated for landing coal and heavy freight from boats, being a convenient height above high water mark, and whereas the regulation of the public streets below the Permanent Bridge, is consider- ably above the private wharves, consequently there will be much difficulty in gaining access to the pavement with loaded carts, and should it become necessary to raise the private wharves so as to correspond with Ches- nut, Walnut and Locust streets, there will be much in- convenience and great loss sustained in the unloading of boats, and as uniformity in the landings on the Schuyl- kill would be not only a convenience but add much to the appearance, your memorialists beg the City Coun- cils to take the subject into consideration and make such regulations in the streets above mentioned as will reduce them to the level of the private wharves.
The following communication from the Commissioners of Moyamensing was received, and was referred to the same committee.
To the Select and Common Councils of the City of Phila- delphia.
Gentlemen-The township of Moyamensing has made frequent attempts to obtain from the city of Philadel- phiia a removal of the nuisance, that exists on Thirteenthi street.
The Commissioners of the township have applied to your honourable bodies on more than one occasion; and the inhabitants residing on that street, in the neighbour- hood of Cedar street, have represented to you, that it is often impassable, that their property is damaged, their cellars filled with water, and that their healths are in- jured in consequence of the line of Thirteenth street being turned into a drain fur the refuse water of the city.
The Commissioners of Moyamensing would have ap- plicd some remedy for this grievance before this time, had they not been under the conviction that the city ought to provide for the discharge of her own sur- plus water. they were of opinion that as the city paved her streets, erceted houses, and covered her whole plot with improvements, shic would find the means of conveying away the water thus drained
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into her gutters without incommoding her neigh- bours. They did not believe that the city would draw from her works erected on the Schuylkill large supplies of water, for furnishing the different manufac- turing establishments, and others within her hounds, and after it has been used by them, and has been infused and corrupted with mineral and vegetable poisons, that she would throw it upon an adjoining district. But there was another reason that induced the belief that the city would take charge of this water, and that was the fact, that the original plans of the heights and levels of the city have been changed, so that the point of inter- section of Thirteenth and Cedar streets is lowered by the present regulation at least two feet, and thus the quantity of water which would naturally be thrown to that point is greatly increased.
For these reasons, the Commissioners of Moyamen- sing have ever thought, and still feel confident, that the city of Philadelphia will do what is just and right. They have therefore appointed the undersigned a com- mittee to address your honourable bodies, and to re- quest you to appoint a committee to meet this commit- tee, for the purpose of devising some plan for carrying off the water, which is at present the source of so much evil and inconvenience.
With sentiments of much respect, we subscribe our- selves your oh't servants,
JACOB THOMAS, EDWARD SMITH, JAMES MAXWELL, Committee.
April 26, 1832.
The resolution attached to the report of the commit- tee on Markets, which was passed by the Common Council at their last meeting, was concurred in by the Select Council.
The ordinance which was passed by the Common Council was referred by the Select Council to the com- mittee on the revised ordinances.
Mr. JOHNSON offered the annexed resolution which was adopted.
Resolved, by the Select and Common Councils, That the Mayor be, and he is hereby authorized to draw his warrant on the City Treasurer for the amount of taxes due on the estate of the late Stephen Girard, and for the amount of such expenses as he may have incurred, in relation to the said estate, and that the same be charg- ed to the Girard fund.
The Select Council did not concur with the Common Council in the amendment of the resolution attached to the report of the Library Committee, but adhered to it as originally reported, and appointed a committee of conference, and Messrs. Pettit and Massey were ap- pointed the committee on behalf of the Select Council and Messrs Horn and Leiper on the part of the Common Council.
The following resolution reported by the Girard com- mittee at a previous meeting was adopted:
Resolved, by the Select and Common Councils of the city of Philadelphia, That the Executors of the late Stephen Girard be, and they are hereby authorized, in their capacity as executors, to cause the square of ground between High and Chesnut, and Eleventh and Twelfth streets, to be built upon and improved agreea- bly to the plan, contracts and arrangements of the tes- tator; to employ and compensate all suitable agents, to contract for work and materials, and to pay for the same out of funds that may be in their hands as executors; and that the receipts which they shall obtain, for all payments made by them, in the prosecution of the said improvements, shall be accepted by "The Mayor, Al- dermen, and Citizens of Philadelphia," as a part, of the amount of said receipts, of the residuary estate devised and bequeathed by the said testator, to the said "The Mayor, Aldermen, and Citizens of Philadelphia."
COMMON COUNCIL,-Mr. SEXTON presented the
annexed communication which was referred to the com- mittee on the Drawbridge Lot.
The Honourable the Select and Common Councils of the City of Philadelphia.
The petition of the subscribers, respectfully sheweth, That on the twenty-fifth day of September, Anno Domini 1818, they entered into an Indenture of Lease with the City Commissioners in behalf of the Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of Philadelphia, for the use of a certain public lot of ground, situate on the east side of Water street in the city of Philadelphia, bounded westward by Water street, southward by the Dock com- monly called the Horse Dock, and northward by ground now owned by John Kern, containing fifteen feet on Wa- ter street, and running eastward fifty feet, together with the appurtenances in which said Indenture are contain- ed inter alia the following covenants, to wit :- "And it is further covenanted and agreed between the said par- ties, their executors and administrators, that at the ex- piration of the said term of twenty-one years, the im- provements so to be erected on said lot of ground shall be justly ard fairly valued, and each party furnished with a copy of such valuation, and the said Mayor, Al- dermen and Citizens of Philadelphia covenant, promise and agree to, and with the said Gabriel Kern, Jr. and George A. Snyder, their executors, administrators and assigns, tbat on such valuation and estimate being made and on their receiving a copy of the same, that they will pay or cause to be paid to the said Gabriel Kern, Jr. and George A. Snyder, or to the survivor of them or their executors, administrators or assigns of such sur- vivor, at the end of the said term of twenty-one years, the sum so ascertained to be the value of the said im- provements: Provided, that the said Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of Philadelphia shall not in any event be liable to pay for the said improvements more than the sum of three thousand dollars."
"And also that the said Gabriel Kern, Jr. and George A Snyder shall not nor will at any time during the con- tinuance of the said term assign the hereby devised premises to any person or persons whomsoever, without the license and consent of the said Mayor, Aldermen and Citizens of Philadelphia in writing for that purpose first had and obtained." And that your petitioners have improved the said lot of ground agreeably to their con- tract in the said indenture mentioned, and have per- formed all other their covenants and agreements in the same mentioned since they have occupied the said lot of ground, and that they are desirous of parting with the residue of the term, in pursuance of which they re- spectfully beg leave to offer to Councils the said im- provements and the residue of said term, upon the principles set forth in said lease, to wit, the appoint- ment of appraisers to ascertain the value of the same. Your petitioners therefore pray Councils to adopt such mesasures as they may deem expedient and necessary, or in the alternative to allow your petitioners to dispose of the same to whomsoever they shall think proper, and your petitioners will ever pray.
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