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. It is only by such a course
that the confidence and good will of the community can be preserved, and
in the sequel the best interests of the institutions themselves
promoted.

New dangers to the banks are also daily disclosed from the extension
of that system of extravagant credit of which they are the pillars.
Formerly our foreign commerce was principally founded on an exchange
of commodities, including the precious metals, and leaving in its
transactions but little foreign debt. Such is not now the case. Aided
by the facilities afforded by the banks, mere credit has become too
commonly the basis of trade. Many of the banks themselves, not content
with largely stimulating this system among others, have usurped the
business, while they impair the stability, of the mercantile community;
they have become borrowers instead of lenders; they establish their
agencies abroad; they deal largely in stocks and merchandise; they
encourage the issue of State securities until the foreign market is
glutted with them; and, unsatisfied with the legitimate use of their own
capital and the exercise of their lawful privileges, they raise by large
loans additional means for every variety of speculation. The disasters
attendant on this deviation from the former course of business in this
country are now shared alike by banks and individuals to an extent of
which there is perhaps no pre