The banks at that center, to which currency flows and where it is
required in payments for merchandise, hold the power of controlling
those in regions whence it comes, while the latter possess no means
of restraining them; so that the value of individual property and the
prosperity of trade through the whole interior of the country are made
to depend on the good or bad management of the banking institutions in
the great seats of trade on the seaboard.
But this chain of dependence does not stop here. It does not terminate
at Philadelphia or New York. It reaches across the ocean and ends in
London, the center of the credit system. The same laws of trade which
give to the banks in our principal cities power over the whole banking
system of the United States subject the former, in their turn, to the
money power in Great Britain. It is not denied that the suspension of
the New York banks in 1837, which was followed in quick succession
throughout the Union, was produced by an application of that power, and
it is now alleged, in extenuation of the present condition of so large
a portion of our banks, that their embarrassments have arisen from the
same cause.
Pages:
644
645
646
647
648
649
650
651
652
653
654
655
656
657
658
659
660
661
662
663
664
665
666
667
668