t amount
of capital vested in it by the United States require your careful
attention. Its charter expired on the 3d day of March last, and it has
now no power but that given in the twenty-first section, "to use the
corporate name, style, and capacity for the purpose of suits for the
final settlement and liquidation of the affairs and accounts of the
corporation, and for the sale and disposition of their estate--real,
personal, and mixed--but not for any other purpose or in any other
manner whatsoever, nor for a period exceeding two years after the
expiration of the said term of incorporation." Before the expiration
of the charter the stockholders of the bank obtained an act of
incorporation from the legislature of Pennsylvania, excluding only the
United States. Instead of proceeding to wind up their concerns and pay
over to the United States the amount due on account of the stock held
by them, the president and directors of the old bank appear to have
transferred the books, papers, notes, obligations, and most or all of
its property to this new corporation, which entered upon business as
a continuation of the old concern. Amongst other acts of questionable
validity, the notes of the expired corporation are known to have been
used as its own and again put in circulation. That the old bank had no
right to issue or reissue its notes after the expiration of its charter
can not be denied, and that it could not confer any such right on its
substitute any more than exercise it itself is equally plain. In law and
honesty the notes of the bank in circulation at the expiration of its
charter should have been called in by public advertisement, paid up as
presented, and, together with those on hand, canceled and destroyed.
Their reissue is sanctioned by no law and warranted by no necessity.
If the United States be responsible in their stock for the payment of
these notes, their reissue by the new corporation for their own profit
is a fraud on the Government. If the United States is not responsible,
then there is no legal responsibility in any quarter, and it is a fraud
on the country. They are the redeemed notes of a dissolved partnership,
but, contrary to the wishes of the retiring partner and without his
consent, are again reissued and circulated.

It is the high and peculiar duty of Congress to decide whether any
further legislation be necessary for the security of the large amount of
public property now held and in use by the n