gress, forbidding the
officers of the government from receiving the notes of any banks which
were not redeemable in specie. The question is not one of primary
importance, yet as it may affect our future policy, and concerns our
present justice, we will add a few remarks on the subject. When we see
that the measure of the government alluded to was not immediately
followed by the desired effect, but that as soon as the Bank of the
United States was about to go into operation, an arrangement was
voluntarily entered into with it by the banks of New-York, Philadelphia,
Baltimore, and Virginia, by which they all agreed to resume cash
payments at the same time, it seems to afford _prima facie_ evidence,
that it is to the Bank of the United States, and not to the legislature,
that the resumption is directly attributable. Whether the state banks
might not, at some subsequent time, have paid specie, and at what time,
must now remain a matter of conjecture; but we think it quite as likely,
that the banks, making extraordinary profits as they were, so long as
they were not compelled to redeem their notes in specie, would have
procured a repeal of the resolution of congress, as that that measure
would have operated coercively on them. In some of the states, the
resumption of specie payments was discountenanced by the state
legislatures; and in Virginia, if we mistake not, after the measure had
been enjoined on the banks by the legislature, it afterwards retraced
its steps, on the ground, that if they ventured to pay specie, the Bank
of the United States, then about to go into operation, would immediately
draw every dollar from their vaults. The banks of that state thus had
the express sanction of its legislature for continuing the suspension;
nor was it until after the meeting of the convention, mentioned in our
last number, that they paid specie.

But in what way, it may be asked, could the Bank of the United States
have compelled the state banks to resume specie payments, if they had
not been so disposed? We answer, by giving the public the option of a
better currency than theirs, and presenting an easy and ready standard
in every part of the Union, by which the depreciation of their notes
would have been manifest. As soon as the paper of the national bank had
been put into circulation, it would command, by its convertibility into
specie, a preference in the market over the paper of the state banks,
and the difference would have b