her
banks; Girard cut them down to the average rate. To the watchman and
the clerks this conduct, doubtless, seemed little. Without pausing to
argue the question with them, let us contemplate the new banker in his
great actions. He was the very sheet-anchor of the government credit
during the whole of that disastrous war. If advances were required at
a critical moment, it was Girard who was promptest to make them. When
all other banks and houses were contracting, it was Girard who stayed
the panic by a timely and liberal expansion. When all other paper was
depreciated, Girard's notes, and his alone, were as good as gold. In
1814, when the credit of the government was at its lowest ebb, when a
loan of five millions, at seven per cent interest and twenty dollars
bonus, was up for weeks, and only procured twenty thousand dollars, it
was "old Girard" who boldly subscribed for the whole amount; which at
once gave it market value, and infused life into the paralyzed credit
of the nation. Again, in 1816, when the subscriptions lagged for the
new United States Bank, Girard waited until the last day for receiving
subscriptions, and then quietly subscribed for the whole amount not
taken, which was three million one hundred thousand dollars. And yet
again, in 1829, when the enormous expenditures of Pennsylvania upon
her canals had exhausted her treasury and impaired her credit, it was
Girard who prevented the total suspension of the public works by a
loan to the Governor, which the assembling Legislature might or might
not reimburse.

Once, during the war, the control of the coin in the bank procured him
a signal advantage. In the spring of 1813, his fine ship, the
Montesquieu, crammed with tea and fabrics from China, was captured by
a British shallop when she was almost within Delaware Bay. News of the
disaster reaching Girard, he sent orders to his supercargo to treat
for a ransom. The British admiral gave up the vessel for one hundred
and eighty thousand dollars in coin; and, despite this costly ransom,
the cargo yielded a larger profit than that of any ship of Girard's
during the whole of his mercantile career. Tea was then selling at war
prices. Much of it brought, at auction, two dollars and fourteen cents
a pound, more than four times its cost in China. He appears to have
gained about half a million of dollars.

From the close of the war to the end of his life, a period of sixteen
years, Girard pursued the even tenor of h