The plea has ceased to be one of necessity.
Convenience and policy are now deemed sufficient to warrant these
institutions in disregarding their solemn obligations. Such conduct
is not merely an injury to individual creditors, but it is a wrong to
the whole community, from whose liberality they hold most valuable
privileges, whose rights they violate, whose business they derange, and
the value of whose property they render unstable and insecure. It must
be evident that this new ground for bank suspensions, in reference to
which their action is not only disconnected with, but wholly independent
of, that of the public, gives a character to their suspensions more
alarming than any which they exhibited before, and greatly increases
the impropriety of relying on the banks in the transactions of the
Government.
A large and highly respectable portion of our banking institutions are,
it affords me unfeigned pleasure to state, exempted from all blame on
account of this second delinquency. They have, to their great credit,
not only continued to meet their engagements, but have even repudiated
the grounds of suspension now resorted to.
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