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 96
Note: The text from this book was generated using artificial intelligence so there may be some errors. The full pages can be found on Archive.org (link on the Part 1 page).
Part 1 | Part 2 | Part 3 | Part 4 | Part 5 | Part 6 | Part 7 | Part 8 | Part 9 | Part 10 | Part 11 | Part 12 | Part 13 | Part 14 | Part 15 | Part 16 | Part 17 | Part 18 | Part 19 | Part 20 | Part 21 | Part 22 | Part 23 | Part 24 | Part 25 | Part 26 | Part 27 | Part 28 | Part 29 | Part 30 | Part 31 | Part 32 | Part 33 | Part 34 | Part 35 | Part 36 | Part 37 | Part 38 | Part 39 | Part 40 | Part 41 | Part 42 | Part 43 | Part 44 | Part 45 | Part 46 | Part 47 | Part 48 | Part 49 | Part 50 | Part 51 | Part 52 | Part 53 | Part 54 | Part 55 | Part 56 | Part 57 | Part 58 | Part 59 | Part 60 | Part 61 | Part 62 | Part 63 | Part 64 | Part 65 | Part 66 | Part 67 | Part 68 | Part 69 | Part 70 | Part 71 | Part 72 | Part 73 | Part 74 | Part 75 | Part 76 | Part 77 | Part 78 | Part 79 | Part 80 | Part 81 | Part 82 | Part 83 | Part 84 | Part 85 | Part 86 | Part 87 | Part 88 | Part 89 | Part 90 | Part 91 | Part 92 | Part 93 | Part 94 | Part 95 | Part 96 | Part 97 | Part 98 | Part 99 | Part 100 | Part 101 | Part 102 | Part 103 | Part 104 | Part 105 | Part 106 | Part 107 | Part 108 | Part 109 | Part 110 | Part 111 | Part 112 | Part 113 | Part 114 | Part 115 | Part 116 | Part 117
SAMUEL J. ROBBINS, Chairman. Philadelphia, May 15, 1832.
ORRERY.
Messrs. HAWLEY and GARDNER, of York, Pa. have completed an Orrery, said to surpass any thing of the kind in this country. The following notice thereof, is from the York Republican:
"The Orrery represents the rotary motion of the Sun, the orbital and diurnal movements of Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, Jupiter and his four moons, Saturn surrounded by two bright rings and seven moons, and Herschel with six moons, and the orbital motion of all the satellites.
" The machine has thirty-nine brass wheels support- ed by two brass plates; seven arms, (the longest of which is 13 feet 9 inches) on the end of which are seven large glass globes, representing the seven primaries, sur- rounded by eighteen small glasses (all illuminated)
representing the moons. These moons are carried round by a similar number of brass arms. It has four deep-toned steel sounding bars, which indicate the an- nual revolutions of Mercury, Venus, the Earth, and the Moon. The Globes are illuminated by a chemical preparation, which is vastly superior to the lamps here- tofore used for that purpose.
Ofice of the Delaware and Hudson Canal Company. HONESDALE, May 12, 1832.
Received at Honesdale from Carbondale, during one week ending this day, 943 rail-road wagons, containing 23573 tons coal. Also, received during the week, 49 rail-road wagons, containing 77,000 feet lumber.
Total amount of coal received since 2d of April last, 11,830 tons; total amount of lumber received in same time 299,000 feet. J. B. WALTON, Collector.
COAL TRADE OF THE SCHUYLKILL .- Descended last week with coal,
156 boats carrying tons 5,379
626 per last report 22,162
782 27,541
COAL TRADE OF THE LEHIGH .- Coal despatched from Manch Chunk for the week ending 5th mo. 18th, 1832. 50 boats carrying tons 1,992
233 boats 12,576
283
14,568
The Schuylkill Navigation Company received, during the week ending on Saturday last, tolls to the amount of seven thousand six hundred dollars .- Miners' Jourual.
MILFORD, May 18.
We were visited in this vicinity, on the night of the 11th inst. with a slight frost; but we have not heard that any damage was done either to the gardens or fruit.
THE REGISTER.
MAY 26, 1832.
In the present number is commenced the report of Mr. ADAMS, on the Bank of the United States. Our entire form would have been insufficient for its insertion at once-we have therefore been compelled to divide it. The remainder of it, and of the proceedings of Councils, will appear next week.
During the present week, there have been several days of cold, rainy weather. On one night, there was a severe frost in the neighborhood. Fires have been found very comfortable. We understand from differ- ent portions of the country, that there is a prospect of abundant crops, notwithstanding the unfavorable ap- pearances during the former part of the season.
On Tuesday afternoon, a very numerous town meet- ing was held in the State House yard, at which resolu- tions were adopted expressive of disapprobation of the proceedings in relation to receiving subscriptions to the Girard Bank Stock.
Printed every SATURDAY MORNING by WILLIAM F. GED- DES, No. 9 Library Street. Philadelphia; where, and at the PUB- LICATION OFFICE, IN FRANKLIN PLACE, second door back of the Post Office,(front room) subscriptions will be thankfully re- ceived. Price FIVE DOLLARS per annum, payable annually by subscribers residing in or near the city, or where there is an agent. Other subscribers pay in advance.
HAZARD'S REGISTER OF PENNSYLVANIA.
DEVOTED TO THE PRESERVATION OF EVERY KIND OF USEFUL INFORMATION RESPECTING THE STATE.
EDITED BY SAMUEL HAZARD.
VOL: IX .- NO. 22. PHILADELPHIA JUNE 2, 1832. NO. 231.
UNITED STATES BANK.
HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. MONDAY, May 14, 1832.
(Continued from page 231.)
The exploration of-the accounts of members of con- gress and officers of the government with the bank, came, in the opinion of the subscriber, under the same category as those of editors of newspapers. The reso- lutions of the House of Representatives authorized the examination by the committee of the books, only as evi- dences of the proceedings of the corporation.
The questions for the committee were: Had they vio- lated the charter? Had they violated any law of the land? To these inquiries they were limited, and upon these alone could they with propriety report.
As an exemplification of the odious nature of further inquisitions, the subscriber would only mention the case of the members of congress, who, during the present session, have received the compensation for their pub- lic service from the branch bank at Washington in ad- vance of the passage of the general appropriation act. This is one of the favours to members of congress, equi- valent to a Joan without interest to each member, of the amount of money which he thus receives from the time of his receiving it until the appropriation act shall have become a law. Its aggregate amount from the com- mencement of the session to this day, in payments to members of congress, and the executive officers, falls little short of four hundred thousand dollars. The amount of interest that would have accrued to the bank, had interest been paid by each individual member, would have exceeded $3,000. The subscriber himself is not without doubts of the propriety of this indulgence, and confidentiy avers that nothing which the investigation of the committee has discovered in the proceedings of the president and directors of the bank is of a more ques- tionable character. The member who receives his pay in advance of the appropriation, does not indeed receive it in advance of the service which entitles him to it. But where is the law authorizing the bank to make the pay- ment? The member who receives the money is only accessary to the payment by the bank, and there is many a member uf this House, who, in vuting for this investigation, little imagined that his own name would be returned among the members of congress, receivers of special favours from the bank. Many a member, who, perhaps, has received the favour without knowing it; yet is obnoxious in principle to the charge in the origi- nal resolution uffered by the chairman of the committee, quite as obnoxious to the imputation of impure motives in the bank, as the bank can be made by all their trans- actions with editors of newspapers or printers, James Watson Webb and Mordecai M. Noah, included.
One great and insurmountable objection to the right and justice of entering into a scrutiny of motives for proceedings not forbidden by any law, was that the committee could exercise no censorial power of that na- ture over the president, directors, and officers of the bank, or, at all events, over individuals having dealings with that institution, which those individuals bad not an equal right to exercise over the committee, and every one of its members in return. What motive, for exam- VOL. IX.
ple, could impel a member of the committee to call in exercise all the power of congress to suppress the pub- lication of essays or speculations favourable to the bank in newspapers? Would not the editor of a newspaper thus inculpated have the same right to inquire into the motives of the committee-man? If, peradventure, he should have been in the habit of making free use of the press to assail and discredit the bank, would not this struggle to deprive the bank of self-defence through the medium of the press, be attributed to the desire of hav- ing the monopoly of that powerlul engine to himself ? Would it not argue a consciousness of weakness in the appeals to public opinion against the bank, if, to sustain the charges against it, there should be an attempt to suppress all the means of self-defence? The freedom of the press, in the language of party spirit, means the unlicensed use of that instrument for itself to assail, and a total interdiction of its use to the adversary for de- fence. And singular, indeed, would be the section of a charter to a bank which would leave it open to every shaft to slander, and deprive it of all possible means of repelling the assault.
Among the useless, and worse than useless inquisi- tions into which the majority of the committee thought themselves justified in descending, were imputations of political misconduct in certain officers of the branch bank at Norfolk, in Virginia. Articles of complaint, as grievous and perhaps as numerous as those of the chair- man of this committee against the president and direc- tors at Philadelphia, had been laid before that board against the president and cashier at Norfolk, by a per- son who had been one of the directors of that branch. A long and patient investigation of those charges had been made by the board at Philadelphia, and one of their cashiers had been sent to make a thorough examination of all the facts of the case upon the spot itself. The charges had been found totally destitute of foundation, and there was among the archives of the bank a volu- minous correspondence, which was all submitted to the examination of the committee. To give the house a faint idea of the extent of this inquiry, it may be suffi- cicht to say that the whole controversy respecting the accounts of a late navy agent at Norfolk, and the pam- phleteering and newspaper war between that officer and one of the auditors of the treasury, were among the simplest of its elements. After plunging for a series of days into these mysteries, almost deep enough for every member of the committee to take his side upon two or three by-gone contested elections at Norfolk; after plod- ding over manuscript volumes of acrimonious bitterness from the most pertinacious of complainants; after ex- amining the long protracted correspondence both of that complainant and of the inculpated officers of the Nor- folk branch, with the board at Philadelphia, and the cashier who had made the investigation at Norfolk; af- ter giving the complainant himself the trouble of repair- ing to Philadelphia to sustain his charges, and try over again criminations and recriminations, which a judicial tribunal, after summoning half the inhabitants of the borough of Norfolk, and subjecting them to an endless list of interrogatorics and cross-examinations, would scarcely have been competent to solve-after the con- sumption of several days in these inquiries, the last result of which, must, under any possible termination of their
43
338
UNITED STATES BANK.
[JUNE
investigation have left them precisely where they began, the majority of the committee concluded to desist from what the subscriber believed the committee ought never to have undertaken, and what the chairman re- ports " they have been compelled to abandon for want of time."
-
The complaints made against the president of the bank of Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in the summer of 1829, and the correspondence between the board at Philadelphia, and the late secretaries of the treasury and of war, form a portion of the documents relating to the books and proceedings of the bank, called for by the committee, and communicated to them. They are not noticed in the report of the chairman, but, in the opinion of the subscriber, are more deserving of the attention of congress and of the nation, than any other part of the papers commented upon in the report. An effort very thinly veiled on the part of two of the executive depart- ments of the general government to exercise a control, political and pecuniary, over the proceedings of the bank and its branches, a control highly exceptionable in principle, and even contrary to law, appears to him to be fully disclosed in those papers. He will not permit himself to inquire into the motives of the agents in those transactions. It is sufficient for the protection of the public interest that the projected encroachments of power were disconcerted and laid aside.
Among the objects of investigation authorized by the majority of the committee transcending, in the opinion of the subscriber, the powers delegated to them by the resolution of the House, and therefore unwarranted and improper, were six sets of interrogatories, amounting in all to one hundred and sixty-one questions, addressed by one member of the committee to the president of the bank, never submitted to the committee for their con- sideration, but drawn up, a large portion of them, after the committee had closed their examinations at Phila- delphia, and after the subscriber had returned to Wash- ington, and resumed his seat in the house. They re- minded him of certain popular words of instruction for children, in which universal or particular histories, or abstruse and profound sciences are taught by question and answer. The subscriber has found many of them, upon perusal, passing his powers of comprehension, but they appear to comprise a compendium of political eco- nomy, and the skeleton of a profound dissertation upon coins, currency, paper credit, circulation, and banking. The subscriber cannot withhold his admiration from the comprehensive views and profound knowledge of the subject discovered in those inquiries, and believes that satisfactory answers to them might form a very useful second, though somewhat larger volume, to the legisla- tive and documentary history of the Bank of the United States, compiled by the indefatigahle research and in- dustry of the clerk of the house of representatives and his associate. But a large portion of the questions might, with more propriety, be addressed in a circular to the presidents of all the banks in the four quarters of the globe, than to the president of the Bank of the United States. And it may he doubted whether of many of the inquiries, a convention of all the bankers in the world would not be reduced to the necessity of leaving them as they found them-to be solved only by the ingenuity or sagacity of their author. The subscriber objected to them as they were presented in clusters; not but that some of the questions might be within the compass of the powers and duties of the committee, but that they were buried in such a mass of heterogeneous matter, that it would have occupied the committee to the last moment of their happily limited time to extract the per- tinent matter from its encasement. The subscriber be- lieved it quite unjustifiable, under the authority of the committee, to make of this inquiry a general disputation upon banking.
Upon the mass of documents and tabular statements collected by the committee, and reported to the House, the subscriber has so imperfect a knowledge that he can
form no distinctive opinion. He has never had access to the greater part of them. They were called for by resolutions submitted by the chairman and one or two other members of the committee, without disclosing the objects which it was expected they would elucidate. Most of the time, while the committee were at Philadel- phia, was consumed in the compilation of them by the officers of the bank. When collected, they remained in the possession of the chairman of the committee to ena- ble him to prepare his report, and the subscriber has not even seen a considerable portion of them. He will con- fine himself, therefore, to those which have been no- ticed in the report of the chairman and majority of the committee.
1. The charge of usury, as having been taken some ten years since by the branch bank, at Lexington, as set forth in the case of the Corporation against Owens, and others, reported in the second volume of Peters's Reports of cases argued and adjudged in the Supreme Court of the United States, was one of those upon which the chairman of the committee had largely expatiated in his speeches, at the time when he brought forward his resolution of investigation. No information varying the state of the facts as they were then explained, was obtained by the committee. It was then sufficiently shown, that in all the transactions of this case there had been neither usury, nor any thing resembling usury, on the part of the bank. That it was a case in which the bank had not done, but had suffered grievous wrong. A transaction in which the subscriber has no hesitation in saying, that if the parties had been on both sides in- dividuals, the plea upon which the defendants extri- cated themselves from the engagements which they had contracted, would have been in no wise creditable to them.
The bank had discounted a promissory note of Owens for five thousand dollars, upon which the other defend- ants were joint signers with him.
For this note Owens received the sum of 5,000 dol- lars in notes of the Bank of Kentucky, promising to pay the same sum in specie in three years from the date of the note. At that time, the notes of the Bank of Ken- tucky were depreciated, and purchasable in market, at a discount of 54 per cent. Owens received them at their nominal value, and promised payment for them in specie three years after date. The notes had been re- ceived by the Lexington branch, at their nominal value, and partly for government deposites. To them, they were equivalent to specie. Within six months after the transaction, they recovered their nominal value. Had the Lexington branch retained them, they would have been repaid at their full value, with lawful interest, till the time of payment. They never received one dollar of usurious interest upon them-never one dollar more than was actually paid to the holder of them by the Bank of Kentucky, from which they had issued. The money was equivalent to specie to Owens himself, at the time when he received it, and he paid with it debts of his own at their nominal value.
But the branch at Lexington, in the case before the court, was, as many a suiter besides has been, made the victim of a special plea and demurrer. The plea set up by the defendants to escape the payment of an honest debt, set forth, not that the notes of the Kentucky Bank were of less value than specie, to the branch at Lexing- ton, the loaner,-not that they were of less value than specie to Owens, the borrower and receiver; not that at the time when the note was made payable, they were of less value than specie even in the open market, but, that at the time when the note of Owens was discounted, the notes of the Kentucky Bank were GENERALLY DEPRECIATED -so that 100 dollars thereof nominally were of the con- RENT VALUE of only 54 dollars. To this plea of general depreciation, and current volue, there was, perhaps in- cautiously, what the lawyers call a demurrer on the part of the bank, which demurrer, according to the practice of judicial courts, precludes the party from the benefit
1832.]
UNITED STATES BANK.
339
of any other facts than those specially set forth in the plea. Special pleading has long been known among the practitioners of the law, as the science of spreading snares for the unwary; and so odious has it become from the frequency with which it is thereby made to operate unjustly, that in many states of this Union, legislative acts have abolished it altogether, by provid- ing that in all cases whatever a defendant shall be at liberty to take the general issue, and give all special matter in evidence under it. In this case, however, the general issue did not suit the purposes of the de- fendants. They could not aver that they had not made the promise to pay the money for which they were sued by the bank. They could not deny that the Kentucky bank notes had been to the borrower and to the lenders equivalent to so much silver. They could not deny that long before the note became payable, the Kentucky bank notes had recovered their full value. Owens liim- self had not the face to join in the plea, but the joint signers of his note, finding it more convenient to charge the bank with usury, than to fulfil their engagements, screened themselves from performance by this plea of general depreciation, and current value, and by averring in their special plea, contrary to the fact, that there had been a corrupt and unlawful agreement between the bank and themselves, that the bank should receive more than lawful interest upon the loan-to Owens. It was no such thing. There had been no such corrupt agree- ment; but the bank, by demurring to the plea, deprived itself of the means of disproving that allegation, and upon that state of things, the decision of the case, by a bare and doubting majority of the judges of the Su- preme Court, was against the hank. With the utmost deference for the opinions of that court, the subscriber believes that they never gave a judgment of less au- thority than in this identical case.
The judges of the Circuit Court for the district of Kentucky had differed in npinion upon the case. The judgment of the Supreme Court was delivered hy judge Johnson, who declared himself to have entertained very serious doubts of the sufficiency of the averments in the plea. After stating those doubts, he adds "I am con- tent, however, to unite with the three of my brethren, who make up the majority on this point, in holding the averments to be sufficient, because in a considerable dearth of authorities on this subject, I find it decided in the case of Bolten vs. Durham, in Croke's Report, Cro. Eliz. 642, that the confession of the quo animo im- plied in a demurrer will affect a case with usury, when a very similar ease in the same book. in which the plain- tiff had traversed the plea, was left to the jury with a favourable charge. Benningfield vs. Ashley, Cro. Eliz. 741. Here then judge Johnson declares that after very serious doubts he was content to unite with his three brothers, to make up a majority against the bank, because he found in an old Reporter of the time of Queen Elizabeth that the confession of the quo anime, (that is of the alleged but fictitious corrupt agreement) implied in a demurrer, made that usury, which by the authority of the very same book would not have been usury, if the plaintiff had traversed the plea, that is, had denied and tendered in issue the pretended corrupt agreement. If, then, the branch at Lexington, instead of demurring, had traversed the plea of the defendants, that is, if they had denied the existence of the corrupt agreement, averred by the defendant, but which had never existed, the Supreme Court would have decided that there was no usury in the case, and the defendants would have been compelled to perform their lawful en- gagement, instead of evading it by stigmatizing them- selves with corruption.
The subscriber will pursue no further this analysis of the decision of a majority of the judges of the Supreme Court of the United States. In cases where that ven- erable tribunal is at liberty to harmonize in judgment with the award of moral sensibility, there is none to whose discernment and discrimination he would bow
with more respectful deference. But in the review of judicial decisions upon contracts avoided by pleas of usury or statutes of limitation, there would be always found a "considerable dearth of authorities" in the English Reporters, traced back even to the age of Elizabeth, in which the fiat of the law has been in unison with the dictate of justice.
In one of the precedents cited by judge Johnson, the court is said to have observed "there is nothing immo- ral in this transaction, but it is against a prohibitory sta- tute." This remark was not wholly applicable to the case of the bank of the United States against Owens and others. Of that transaction it could not be said ' there was nothing in it immoral. There was something in it profoundly immoral, though not on the part of the bank. Even the violation of the prohibitory statute was an inference against the fact, from the confession implied in a demurrer. The bank was first debarred from the recovery of a just debt, and then branded with usury upon the plea of general depreciation and current value of the notes of the bank of Kentucky, when in fact there was not a cent of usury taken or even reserved.
The subscriber, however, cannot suppress his sur- prise that this case should have been selected and should now be persisted in, as the head and front of the offences of the Bank of the United States. Not alone, because, upon a thorough examination of the facts, as they appear upon the face of the report, it is the settled conviction of his mind that, throughout the whole of this transaction, the bank was the innocent and deeply in- jured party-not alone, because lie deems it would be the summit of injustice to hold the bank of the United States responsible in its charter for an unlucky demur- rer pleaded seven years ago, in a suit brought by the branch at Lexington, against delinquent debtors. But because, setting aside all those considerations, and suppo- sing even the president and directors of the parent bank culpable of all the mistakes in pleading of the branch at Lexington, this transaction is of ten years standing. If usury there were, it was the usury not of Nicholas Biddle and the directors of 1832, but of Langdon Cheves and the directors of 1822. The contract was made in May of that year. From the endorsement upon the note then made by an illustrious citizen of Kentucky, and one of the most distinguished lawyers of the Union, (Mr. Clay, ) it is clear that there was no- thing, in his opinion, in the transaction which could expose it to the charge of usury. The subscriber sees nothing in it of that nature now. It was undoubtedly considered in the same light by the then president of the bank, Mr. Cheves, to whose epinions upon other points regarding the administration of the affairs of the bank, so much deference is shown in the report of the majority of the committee, that the subscriber thinks he might well have been spared this imputation of being accessary te an usurious contract of the branch at Lex- ington, and of having permitted it to be consummated without censure or animadversion.
Need help finding more records? Try our genealogical records directory which has more than 1 million sources to help you more easily locate the available records.